Competing claims exist about how the geographic distance between parents and their adult children has changed historically. A classic modernisation hypothesis is that people currently live further away from their parents than in the past. Others have argued for stability and the remaining importance of local family ties, in spite of a long-term decline in co-residence of adult children and parents. The current paper uses a novel design that relies on reports by grandchildren to study long-term changes in intergenerational proximity in the Netherlands. The analyses show that there has been a clear and continuous decline in intergenerational proximity between the 1940s and the 1990s. Mediation analyses show that educational expansion and urbanisation are the main reasons why proximity declined. No evidence is found for the role of secularisation and increasing international migration. Proximity to parents declined somewhat more strongly for women than for men.

中文翻译：

---

代际接近的长期趋势：来自孙子设计的证据

关于父母与其成年子女之间的地理距离在历史上如何变化的说法存在争议。一个经典的现代化假设是，人们现在比过去住得离父母更远。尽管成年子女和父母共同居住的情况长期下降，但其他人则主张稳定和保持当地家庭关系的重要性。目前的论文使用了一种新颖的设计，该设计依赖于孙辈的报告来研究荷兰代际接近度的长期变化。分析表明，在 1940 年代和 1990 年代之间，代际亲密度明显且持续下降。中介分析表明，教育扩张和城市化是邻近度下降的主要原因。没有证据表明世俗化和增加国际移民的作用。与男性相比，女性与父母的亲近度下降幅度更大。