Home owners in Luxembourg break up less often than renters, a new study by a Liser researcher has found Pexels

Home owners in Luxembourg break up less often than renters, a new study by a Liser researcher has found Pexels

Dr Maike van Damme examined the correlation between overcrowding in houses or flats and couples who break up in her paper “Overcrowded housing and relationship break-up”.

Dr van Damme found that while there was no correlation between overcrowding and separation, being a home owner made a difference.

Analysing data from a long-range survey spanning 2003 to 2014, the researcher examined how Luxembourgish, Portuguese and local residents of other nationalities judged their living space alongside other factors such as income, financial stress and dependent children in the household.

“Spousal joint investments like home ownership can be a barrier to break-up,” Dr van Damme said, adding: “This may be especially true for couples that are in a stormy relationship.”

The researcher said that more data on relationship quality and commitment levels was required to further investigate the association between homeownership and relationship break-ups.

According to the latest Eurostat figures, Luxembourg had the eighth highest divorce rate in Europe in 2015 with 2.4 divorces for every 1,000 residents. The highest rate was in Lithuania at 3.2, followed by Denmark (2.9), Estonia and Latvia (2.6), and Sweden, Czech Republic and Finland (2.5). Luxembourg recorded 1,345 divorces in 2015, up from 1,030 in 2000. Over the same period, it has seen the marriage rate decline, from 2,148 to 2,052.