3709323
The Effect of Union Status at First Childbirth on Union Stability: Evidence from Eastern and Western Germany
It is often assumed that cohabitation is much less stable than marriage. If cohabitation becomes more common among parents, children may be increasingly exposed to separation. However, little is known about how the proportion of cohabiting parents relates to their separation behavior. Higher shares of childbearing within cohabitation might reduce the proportion of negatively selected couples among cohabiting parents, which could in turn improve their union stability. This study focuses on parents who were cohabiting when they had their first child. It compares their union stability within a context in which they represent the majority or the minority. The German case is well-suited to this research goal because non-marital childbearing is common in eastern Germany (60 %) but not in western Germany (27 %). The data came from the German Family Panel (pairfam), and include 1,844 married and cohabiting mothers born in 1971–1973 and 1981–1983. The empirical results suggest that the union stability of cohabiting mothers is positively related to their prevalence: survival curves showed that eastern German cohabiting mothers had a greater degree of union stability than their western German counterparts. This difference increased in the event-history model, which accounted for the particular composition of eastern German society, including the relatively low level of religious affiliation among the population. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity did not change this result. In sum, these findings indicate that context plays an important role in the union stability of cohabiting parents.
40657732
The Role of Cohabitation in Family Formation: The United States in Comparative Perspective.
The prevalence of nonmarital cohabitation is steadily increasing in the United States. In evaluating the contribution of this new living arrangement to family formation, analysts have relied primarily on comparisons between individuals who cohabit and those who do not. We complement this line of inquiry by comparing the United States and 16 industrialized nations. We first identify six conceptually distinct ideal types of cohabitation with respect to family formation. We then propose empirical indicators to distinguish between the different ideal types, and estimate the values of these indicators for each of the 17 nations. Our findings indicate that although a number of countries fit an empirical pattern corresponding to one ideal type, cohabitation in the United States is more difficult to characterize.
141399338
Cohabitation in Western Europe: Trends, issues, and implications.
This is the 8th book in the Family Studies Symposia Series. With the recent surge in research & cohabitation in sociology, psychology, & social work, this book should do quite well.
144324075
Unmarried Cohabitation and Parenthood in Britain and Europe
This paper focuses on cohabitation and unmarried parenthood across a range of European nations. It includes a brief outline of the history of cohabitation, reviews recent trends in cohabitation and unmarried parenthood, compares the stability of marital and cohabiting unions, examines the extent to which cohabiting couples are regarded as families, and the final sections include a review of the policy responses to date, as well as a discussion of the impetuses that may lie behind the rise in cohabitation and unmarried parenthood.
8158053
Changing compatibility of cohabitation and childbearing between young British women born in 1958 and 1970
We investigate the effect of parenthood on whether non-marital unions led to marriage or parting for two cohorts of British women when they were aged between 16 and 29. We compare the effect of conceptions leading to births and the presence and characteristics of children on the odds that a cohabitation was dissolved, or that it was converted to marriage, for women born in 1958 and 1970. A multilevel, multiprocess, competing-risks model allows for multiple cohabitations per woman and endogeneity of fertility status. We find that cohabiting couples’ response to impending parenthood and the presence of children changed over time. In particular, the proportion of cohabiting couples who married before a birth decreased and, in the 1970 cohort only, the risk of dissolution declined during pregnancy. There is also evidence that the presence of a child cemented a cohabiting union for women from the 1970, but not the earlier, cohort.
27226341
The relative stability of cohabiting and marital unions for children
Children are increasingly born into cohabiting parent families, but we know little to date about the implications of this family pattern for children's lives. We examine whether children born into premarital cohabitation and first marriages experience similar rates of parental disruption, and whether marriage among cohabiting parents enhances union stability. These issues are important because past research has linked instability in family structure with lower levels of child well-being. Drawing on the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, we find that white, black and Hispanic children born to cohabiting parents experience greater levels of instability than children born to married parents. Moreover, black and Hispanic children whose cohabiting parents marry do not experience the same levels of family stability as those born to married parents; among white children, however, the marriage of cohabiting parents raises levels of family stability to that experienced by children born in marriage. The findings from this paper contribute to the debate about the benefits of marriage for children.
145785243
Cohabitation and Children's Family Instability
This study estimates how much children's family instability is missed when we do not count transitions into and out of cohabitation, and examines early life course trajectories of children to see whether children who experience maternal cohabitation face more family instability than children who do not. Using data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, analyses show that adding transitions into and out of cohabitation to those into and out of marriage increases our measure of family instability by about 30% for White children (N = 1575) and over 100% for Black children (N = 774). We conclude that future research on the impact of children's family composition while growing up should take into account transitions into and out of cohabitation.
16685562
ldren ' s experience of family disruption and family formation : evidence from 16 FFS countries
t. In this paper, we present a number of descriptive measures on children’s ces of family disruption and family formation. We use data from the Family ility Surveys of 15 European countries and corresponding data from the USA to find out what kind of family circumstances children are born into and xperiences they subsequently have of various family-transformation events of thers. Our presentation reveals some similarities but also striking differences mily-demographic experiences of children in different countries. USA stands ne extreme case with its very high fraction of children born to a lone mother, igher probability for children to experience a union disruption of their parents where else, and with many children having the experience of living in a step Italy stands out at the other end of the scale. Practically all children are here a married mother and very few of them experience a dissolution of their union before they turn 15.
55435559
Dissolution of unions in Europe : A comparative overview
In this paper, we present a number of descriptive measures of couples’ experience of union dissolution in a wide range of European countries. We use data from the last round of Fertility and Family Surveys in order to get a broad cross-country comparison of levels and basic patterns of union disruption in countries considered. We use corresponding data from the USA in order to find out to what extent patterns in Europe differ from those at the other side of the Atlantic. With a number of life-table estimations we display levels of union dissolution of couples in different types of unions. Evidently, the picture looks different if one follows marriages from the date of marriage formation than if one follows any union from the date when a couple moves together. In addition, the stability of unions that start as cohabitation differs from the stability of unions that begin with a direct marriage. Our presentation reveals that unions in any European country are much more stable than unions in the US. The latter country stands out as an extreme case no matter what type of union we choose to study. Nevertheless, a high degree of variation also exists within Europe; a number of Catholic countries in Southern and Eastern Europe impress with particularly low levels of union dissolution.
38716413
Shifting Childrearing to Single Mothers: Results from 17 Western Countries.
We investigate how recent changes in the Western family have affected childhood living arrangements. For 17 developed countries, we use multistate life table techniques to estimate childhood trajectories of coresi-dence with biological fathers versus other maternal partners. In all countries childhood exposure to single parenting is more often caused by parental separation than out-of-partnership childbearing. Both exposure to single parenting and expectancy of childhood spent with a single non-cohabiting mother vary widely across countries, with the United States exhibiting the highest levels of each at early 1990s rates. The greatest international variations concern parental cohabitation-its prevalence, durability, and the degree to which its increase has compensated for a decrease in the expectancy of childhood spent with married parents. Overall, we find little evidence of international convergence in childrearing arrangements, except that in countries where parental marriage has declined over time, childrearing has predominantly shifted to single mothers. Copyright 2003 by The Population Council, Inc..
143751329
Children’s Risk of Parental Break-up
Higher proportions of births outside marriage and more family breakdown indicate that children experience increased diversity of family circumstances at birth and during childhood. While England/Wales and Norway have many similar features, there are distinct differences in social and welfare policies. This article compares children’s experiences in the two countries in relation to these policies. Emphasis is put particularly on the impact of consensual unions. Children are the statistical unit and data from surveys and national statistics are compared. In both countries there is considerable risk of family dissolution in the case of children born into consensual unions, but the more so in England/Wales than in Norway. Even though the rate of extramarital births is much higher in Norway than in England/Wales, the corresponding rate of family change is lower. The article suggests that behind parental break-up lies an old pattern of social stratification masked as family change.
21145478
Children of divorce in the 1990s: an update of the Amato and Keith (1991) meta-analysis.
The present study updates the P. R. Amato and B. Keith (1991) meta-analysis of children and divorce with a new analysis of 67 studies published in the 1990s. Compared with children with continuously married parents, children with divorced parents continued to score significantly lower on measures of academic achievement, conduct, psychological adjustment, self-concept, and social relations. After controlling for study characteristics, curvilinear trends with respect to decade of publication were present for academic achievement, psychological well-being, self-concept, and social relations. For these outcomes, the gap between children with divorced and married parents decreased during the 1980s and increased again during the 1990s.
145434664
Consequences of Parental Divorce for Child Development
In this article, I propose a three-stage estimation model to examine the effect of parental divorce on the development of children’s cognitive skills and noncognitive traits. Using a framework that includes pre-, in-, and post-divorce time periods, I disentangle the complex factors affecting children of divorce. I use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class 1998 to 1999 (ECLS-K), a multiwave longitudinal dataset, to assess the three-stage model. To evaluate the parameters of interest more rigorously, I employ a stage-specific ordinary least squares (OLS) model, a counterfactual matching estimator, and a piece-wise growth curve model. Within some combinations of developmental domains and stages, in particular from the in-divorce stage onward, I find negative effects of divorce even after accounting for selection factors that influence children’s skills and traits at or before the beginning of the dissolution process. These negative outcomes do not appear to intensify or abate in the ensuing study period.
145692528
Partnership Instability and Child Well-Being
We use data from three waves of the Fragile Families Study (N = 2,111) to examine the prevalence and effects of mothers? partnership changes between birth and age 3 on children?s behavior. We find that children born to unmarried and minority parents experience significantly more partnership changes than children born to parents who are married or White. Each transition is associated with a modest increase in behavioral problems, but a significant number of children experience three or more transitions. The effects of instability do not depend on the mothers? relationship status or race/ethnicity with one exception: instability has a stronger effect on aggression among Hispanic children. The association between instability and behavior is mediated by maternal stress and lower quality mothering.
74461262
Impact of Family Breakdown on Children’s Well-Being: evidence review. DSCF Research Report No. DCSF-RR113
The views expressed in this report are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Department for Children, Schools and Families for this study, although the views expressed in this report are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Department for Children, Schools and Families. This study was carried out as part of the Thomas Coram Research Unit's programme of responsive research for the Department for Children, Schools and Families. This provides a facility for government policy makers to request small-scale, exploratory studies on issues of immediate policy relevance. Such work is carried out by experienced researchers in accordance with sound research principles. It is, however, important when reading and using reports from responsive programme studies to bear in mind the limited time and resources available for each piece of work. Responsive programme studies are particularly useful in bringing together diverse evidence, 'scoping' a new field, and providing a basis for more substantive in-depth research where this appears to be necessary. ii Executive Summary Introduction Demographic and social changes in the last three decades have resulted in families that are more diverse and complex in their structure. More couples are cohabiting and becoming parents, though the risk of parental separation among this group is higher than among married parents; divorce rates have remained relatively constant and the number of stepfamilies is growing fast. Children now have a higher probability of experiencing parental separation, having a lone parent, and being part of a stepfamily than was once the case. The impact this experience has on children is a key issue for policymakers since although the government wants to support stable relationships between parents, where they break down there is a responsibility to provide support to optimise positive outcomes for children. As a consequence, the Thomas Coram Research Unit, under the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) funded responsive programme, was commissioned to undertake a review of the impact of parental separation and divorce on children's well-being and development, to inform the PMSU / DCSF childhood project and policy development in this area. The overall aim of the review was to highlight key findings concerning the antecedents, processes and sequelae of family breakdown and its impact on children, while giving due weight to the complexities of the topic, the strength of …
14060109
Children and Family Dissolution in Norway
This article presents a nationwide study of family dissolution among cohabiting and married parents of three cohorts of Norwegian children born in 1980, 1986 and 1992 respectively. The study focuses on two main topics: the dissolution trend of consensual and marital unions, and factors affecting the dissolution rates of parental unions. The results show that children of cohabiting parents run a much higher risk of dissolution compared to children in marital unions and this risk is not diminishing as cohabitation becomes more widespread. Event history analysis shows that among important predictors of family dissolution the two most important are number of siblings and whether parents are married or not. Other important factors are mother's age upon entering the union, and the presence of older half-sisters/-brothers. The consequences for children living in consensual unions are discussed.
39944543
Increasing fertility in cohabiting unions: evidence for the second demographic transition in the united states?
As cohabitation becomes increasingly common and accepted, one might expect the meaning of this arrangement to change. In some countries in Europe (e.g., Sweden), as cohabitation became more prevalent, it moved from a deviant status to an acceptable alternative to marriage. Will the same thing happen in the United States? To investigate this question, I examine increases in the proportion of births occurring in cohabiting unions, using data from the 1987–1988 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) and the1995 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). The standardization and decomposition procedure shows that most of the growth in the proportion of births to cohabitors is the result of increases in the proportion of women cohabiting, rather than changes in union formation behaviors surrounding pregnancies.
146792064
Changes in Conjugal Life in Canada: Is Cohabitation Progressively Replacing Marriage?.
This article aims first to contrast the trends of marriage and cohabitation across different regions in Canada, and second, to assess whether cohabitation constitutes a new stage in the progression to marriage, or an alternative to marriage altogether. Based on various empirical demographic indicators, the analysis shows profound differences across the country. In Quebec, cohabiting unions are now widely accepted as forming the basis for family life, whereas they still largely constitute a childless prelude to marriage elsewhere in Canada. The authors discuss the role of different religious and cultural backgrounds, and of recent changes in the relationships between men and women, in accounting for the divergent evolution observed. Key Words: Canada, cohabitation, marriage, nonmarital births, partnership transition, union instability. In the last 30 years, most Western countries have witnessed formidable changes in the foundation of the family institution. Demographic indicators point to a postponement of marriage and to a decline in the proportion of individuals who are likely to marry during their lifetime. Marriage has also been characterized by growing levels of instability, with divorce rates showing that it is not that uncommon among these countries to find that one marriage out of two is likely to dissolve. The dramatic increase in cohabiting unions over the last 30 years-first as a way for young adults to start their conjugal life, and more recently, as an environment in which to start and raise a family-further led researchers to question the "future of marriage" (title of Jessie Bernard's well-known book, and the theme of the 2003 National Council on Family Relations [NCFR] annual conference). Currently, the recognition of same-sex marriage has prompted debates about the meaning of marriage. How has the institution of marriage changed in recent decades, and how do these changes vary across cultures and across countries? These are some of the questions that were raised at the 2003 NCFR conference. One of the ways to document the weakening of marriage and its change in meaning is to look more closely at the progression of cohabitation over time. This was the focus of the plenary session, "Cohabitation and Marriage in Western Countries," in which we were invited to present a paper. More specifically, we were asked first to describe the demographic trends of marriage and cohabitation in Canada, and second, to assess whether cohabitation constitutes a new stage in the progression to marriage or an alternative to marriage altogether. After addressing these issues, we close by discussing possible explanations underlying the observed changes. By contrasting the evolution of demographic behaviors adopted across the different regions in Canada, we show that cohabitation has reached different stages of development in Quebec as opposed to elsewhere in Canada, as formulated by Kiernan (2001). In the former, cohabitation seems now to be nearly indistinguishable from marriage, as it is in Sweden, whereas in the latter, cohabitation is still accepted predominantly as a childless phase of conjugal life, as is the case in the United States. THE DECLINE OF MARRIAGE Profound changes have transformed the conjugal life of Canadians in recent decades. Figure 1 presents the evolution of total female marriage rates, calculated by combining marriage vital statistics and census population counts, and exemplifies the fall of marriage over the last 30 years. These rates show the proportions of women within synthetic cohorts who would marry at least once if the behaviors observed in any given year were to last. As can be seen in Figure 1, marriage was still very popular throughout the 1960s; more than 9 women out of 10 would marry over the course of their life. In the mid-1970s, marriage started to lose ground progressively, and by the turn of the century, just slightly over half of women were expected to marry in Canada. …
13210179
Unmarried cohabitation and union stability: Testing the role of diffusion using data from 16 European countries
Cohabitors and married people who cohabited before marriage have higher risks of union dissolution than people who married without prior cohabitation. However, these differences in union stability vary markedly between countries. We hypothesize that the impact of cohabitation on union stability depends on how far cohabitation has diffused within a society. We test this hypothesis with data from 16 European countries. The results support our hypothesis: former cohabitors run a higher risk of union dissolution than people who married without prior cohabitation only in societies in which cohabitation is a small minority or a large majority phenomenon.
16074124
Reassessing the link between premarital cohabitation and marital instability
Premarital cohabitation has been found to be positively correlated with the likelihood of marital dissolution in the United States. To reassess this link, I estimate proportional hazard models of marital dissolution for first marriages by using pooled data from the 1988, 1995, and 2002 surveys of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). These results suggest that the positive relationship between premarital cohabitation and marital instability has weakened for more recent birth and marriage cohorts. Using multiple marital outcomes for a person to account for one source of unobserved heterogeneity, panel models suggest that cohabitation is not selective of individuals with higher risk of marital dissolution and may be a stabilizing factor for higher-order marriages. Further research with more recent data is needed to assess whether these results are statistical artifacts caused by data weaknesses in the NSFG.
56295634
Differences in Fertility Patterns between East and West German Women Disentangling the roles of cultural background and of the transformation process
The present study compares parity-specifi c fertility patterns of West and East German women (from birth cohorts 1970 and younger) after German re-unifi - cation using panel data from the GSOEP (waves 1990 through 2006). Whereas the transition rate for the birth of the fi rst child tends to be higher in the East German than in the West German sub-sample, the likelihood of second births remains con- siderably higher among West German women across time. The analyses presented comprise a detailed comparative test of different intervening mechanisms, repre- sented by sociocultural orientations and social inequalities resulting from the soci- etal transformation process. Although the transition rate to fi rst births among East German women is lowered by their higher education and work aspirations, their higher degree of family orientation promotes their propensity to start a family. Sur- prisingly, the higher proportion of persons without a denomination in East Germany promotes the transition to parenthood because it accelerates both the engagement in and the consolidation of intimate relationships. The lower transition rate to sec- ond births among East German women is partly accounted for by the higher work aspirations, by the lower religiosity and by the lower general life satisfaction in this subgroup.
145806816
Women's Employment and Non-Marital Childbearing: A Comparison between East and West Germany in the 1990s
In contrast to West Germany, where marriage and childbirth have been strongly coupled, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) displayed high rates of non-marital childbearing. Researchers attributed this pattern to “misguided” GDR family policies that encouraged women to remain unmarried after childbirth. With German unification, East Germany’s legal and political institutions — including family policies — were replaced by those of West Germany. Against this background, it was widely expected that east German non-marital birth rates would soon fall to west German levels. After unification, however, they increased even further.This article argues that the enormous east-west differences in non-marital childbearing in the 1990s can be attributed to differences in women’s work orientation. Despite unfavourable labour market constraints and social policies that encourage women’s withdrawal from the labour force after childbirth, east German women, compared with their west German counterparts, are still more likely to be in full-time employment, and to re-enter the labour force sooner after childbirth. Our empirical investigation, drawing on data from the German 1997 micro-census, reveals a strong effect of women’s education and employment on marriage in west Germany, whereas in east Germany the probability of living in a marital union is hardly correlated at all with women’s employment characteristics. We conclude that a generally strong female work orientation and the wide availability of public day care facilities are the most important factors weakening the economic incentives for east German women to get married at childbirth.
35707334
Gender and Work in Germany: Before and After Reunification
New state and market arrangements were twice imposed on the residents of the eastern part of Germany, once when Germany was divided in 1949 and again when it was reunified in 1990; these changes produced a unique natural experiment concerning the effect of policies and institutions on the gendered nature of work. This review synthesizes research on gender equality in paid and unpaid work in East versus West Germany during the decades immediately preceding and following reunification. We consider empirical evidence on gender equality in five major dimensions of work: the prevalence of labor market attachment, time spent in paid work, wages, employment sector and occupation, and time spent in unpaid work in the home. Taken together, developments across these dimensions suggest that, following reunification, the two parts of the country converged toward the gendered arrangement in which men are employed full-time and their female partners hold part-time jobs—with some evidence of continuing differences betwe...
46122611
The long-standing demographic East-West-divide in Germany
Over the last decades numerous studies have dealt with demographic differences between the former communist eastern part of Germany and western Germany. Although the demography of these two regions has converged with respect to mortality and overall fertility levels, non-marital births are the norm in eastern Germany but the exception in western Germany. A number of explanations, stemming from the policy and socio-economic conditions of eastern and western Germany in recent decades, have been put forth. Here, we show that the divide in demographic behavior regarding fertility and marriage pre-dates the division of Germany into a communist east and (capitalist) west. Indeed, the areas in eastern Germany that formed the German Democratic Republic had in average roughly twice the level of non-marital fertility from at least since the middle of the 19th century. The persistence of the past suggests that explanations depending on current conditions are likely to be incomplete and that convergence, if it happens, will be a process lasting many decades or even centuries.
130792387
Diversität von Familienformen in Ost- und Westdeutschland
Abstract In this paper data from the first wave of the German family panel ( pairfam ) is used to study the diversity of living arrangements in Germany. The analyses are restricted to the birth cohorts 1971-1973. These cohorts have entered adulthood after unification, but made significant transitions, like the birth of their first children, until interview in 2008/09. The investigation focuses on the union dynamics after the birth of the first child. We find significant differences in family formation patterns between eastern and western Germany. Respondents in eastern Germany are more often unmarried than western German respondents when the first child is born. Also after family formation, western Germans remain more likely to marry than eastern Germans. Separation rates are higher in eastern Germany in the immediate year after childbirth. A striking feature of the eastern German pattern is that a large fraction of roughly ten percent of the respondents does not have a partner (anymore) when the first child is born. We have also studied how partnership status at first birth relates to separation rates. In line with other studies, we find that cohabiting unions are less stable than marital unions. Comparing behavior in eastern and western Germany, we find that marital unions in the West are more stable than in the East. However, cohabiting unions in the eastern part of Germany display lower separation rates than non-marital unions in the western states. Keywords: Family, Living Arrangement, Separation, Germany, Eastern Germany, Western Germany
5191639
The deinstitutionalization of American marriage
This article argues that marriage has undergone a process of deinstitutionalization—a weakening of the social norms that define partners’ behavior—over the past few decades. Examples are presented involving the increasing number and complexity of cohabiting unions and the emergence of same-sex marriage. Two transitions in the meaning of marriage that occurred in the United States during the 20th century have created the social context for deinstitutionalization. The first transition, noted by Ernest Burgess, was from the institutional marriage to the companionate marriage. The second transition was to the individualized marriage in which the emphasis on personal choice and self-development expanded. Although the practical importance of marriage has declined, its symbolic significance has remained high and may even have increased. It has become a marker of prestige and personal achievement. Examples of its symbolic significance are presented. The implications for the current state of marriage and its future direction are discussed. A quarter century ago, in an article entitled ‘‘Remarriage as an Incomplete Institution’’ (Cherlin, 1978), I argued that American society lacked norms about the way that members of stepfamilies should act toward each other. Parents and children in first marriages, in contrast, could rely on well-established norms, such as when it is appropriate to discipline a child. I predicted that, over time, as remarriage after divorce became common, norms would begin to emerge concerning proper behavior in stepfamilies—for example, what kind of relationship a stepfather should have with his stepchildren. In other words, I expected that remarriage would become institutionalized, that it would become more like first marriage. But just the opposite has happened. Remarriage has not become more like first marriage; rather, first marriage has become more like remarriage. Instead of the institutionalization of remarriage,
34555998
Why Do Cohabiting Couples Marry? An Example of a Causal Event History Approach to Interdependent Systems
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a causal approach to interdependent systems based on two empirical investigations. These examples demonstrate (1) the study of two highly interdependent processes: entry into first marriage as the dependent process and the process of first birth/first pregnancy as the explaining one; (2) an interdependence occurring mainly in a very specific phase of individuals' lives (i.e. during the period of first family formation); (3) the involvement of time lags between cause and its effect (e.g. time until detection of conception); and (4) the highly dynamic character of an unfolding effect over time (i.e. the effect of first pregnancy/first birth on first marriage strongly depends on the progress of pregnancy and the time since the birth has taken place).
144396814
The Ties That Bind: Principles of Cohesion in Cohabitation and Marriage
A vast literature addresses the correlates of marital stability, but little is known about what unites cohabiting partners over time. Although a specialized division of labor might increase the benefits of marriage and strengthen ties between husband and wife, transactional considerations make specialization unattractive for cohabitors. Drawing from work on the emergence of commitment, we argue that cohabitors are more likely to remain together under conditions of equality. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we test these ideas by modeling the stability of married and longterm cohabiting unions in the United States. We find that married couples who adopt a more specialized division of labor are less likely to divorce, but the effect is modest. Among cohabitors, partners whose employment and earnings are increasingly similar face sharply reduced risks of breaking up, but the effect is asymmetric. Inequality is more disruptive when the female cohabitor earns more than her partner.
6055048
Premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital dissolution: a matter of self-selection?
Married couples who began their relationship by cohabiting appear to face an increased risk of marital dissolution, which may be due to self-selection of more dissolution-prone individuals into cohabitation before marriage. This paper uses newly developed econometric methods to explicitly address the endogeneity of cohabitation before marriage in the hazard of marital disruption by allowing the unobserved heterogeneity components to be correlated across the decisions to cohabit and to end a marriage. These methods are applied to data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. We find significant heterogeneity in both cohabitation and marriage disruption, and discover evidence of self-selection into cohabitation.
22193731
Cohabitation, Marriage, and Divorce in a Model of Match Quality
The objective of this research is to further our understanding of how and why individuals enter and leave coresidential relationships. We develop and estimate an economic model of nonmarital cohabitation, marriage, and divorce that is consistent with current data on the formation and dissolution of relationships. Jovanovic's (Journal of Political Economy 87 (1979), 972-90) theoretical matching model is extended to help explain household formation and dissolution behavior. Implications of the model reveal what factors influence the decision to start a relationship, what form this relationship will take, and the relative stability of the various types of unions. The structural parameters of the model are estimated using longitudinal data from a sample of female high school seniors from the United States. New numerical methods are developed to reduce computational costs associated with estimation. The empirical results have interesting interpretations given the structural model. They show that a significant cause of cohabitation is the need to learn about potential partners and to hedge against future bad shocks. The estimated parameters are used to conduct several comparative dynamic experiments. For example, we show that policy experiments changing the cost of divorce have little effect on relationship choices.
157512370
The disruption of marital and non-marital unions in contemporary Sweden.
In this chapter we study the extent and structure of the general decline in the stability of marital and non-marital unions in Sweden over the quarter-century between the 1950s and the late 1970s....We focus on the event that a conjugal union breaks up and the partners stop living together and use hazard regression techniques to analyse dissolutions among a reasonably large number of Swedish women from all walks of life taken from the 1981 Swedish Fertility Survey. (EXCERPT)
18273606
Cohabitation and children's living arrangements: New estimates from the United States.
This paper uses the 1995 and 2002 waves of the National Survey of Family Growth to examine recent trends in cohabitation in the United States. We find increases in both the prevalence and duration of unmarried cohabitation. Cohabitation continues to transform children's family lives, as children are increasingly born to cohabiting mothers (18% during 1997-2001) or later experience their mother's entry into a cohabiting union. Consequently, we estimate that two-fifths of all children spend some time in a cohabiting family by age 12. Because of substantial missing data in the 2002 NSFG, we are unable to produce new estimates of divorce or of children's time in single-parent families. Nonetheless, our results point to the steady growth of cohabitation and to the evolving role of cohabitation in U.S. family life.
145733980
Families formed outside of marriage.
Cohabitation and childbearing outside of marriage are increasingly common family arrangements in the US. Cohabitation is becoming more like formal marriage in that both are childrearing institutions. Attempts to study the meaning of families formed outside of marriage face the challenge of studying a moving target because the rapid rise in nonmarital families contributes to new meanings and institutional supports. Among these institutions are state policies that formalize ties between members of nonmarital families. This review summarizes the changing demography of cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing considers the causes and effects of these changes describes some recent policies that formalize the relationship between members of families formed outside of marriage. These policies may affect family members behavior. (authors)
43427825
A joint model of marital childbearing and marital disruption
Married couples with children appear to be less likely to end their marriages than childless couples, especially when the children are young. Although this suggests that children affect the chances that their parents will divorce, the process may not be so simple: the chances that the marriage will last also may affect couples’ willingness to make the commitment to the marriage implied by having children. This paper uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to test the hypothesis that the risk of disruption faced by a married woman affects the chances that she will conceive and bear a child. The model used takes into account the simultaneous relationships between marital dissolution and marital fertility by including the hazard of disruption as a predictor of timing and likelihood of marital conception, and by including the results of previous fertility decisions as predictors of disruption of the marriage. We find that the hazard of disruption has strong negative effects on the hazard of marital childbearing, lengthening the intervals between births and decreasing the chances that a child will be born. This effect appears to be strongest for women who have had at least one child, either before or during the current marriage, although it is also large for childless women. Explicitly including the hazard of disruption in models of marital childbearing has sizable and important effects on many predictors of fertility.
55781224
Cohabitation, Marriage, and First Birth: The Interrelationship of Family Formation Events in Spain
In this paper, we investigate (1) the mutualcausal relationship between first unionformation and first childbirth, and (2) theexistence of constant unmeasured determinantsshared by these two events. We argue that thesedeterminants mainly consist of valueorientations that are heterogeneous in thepopulation. We apply event-history techniquesto retrospective survey data on Spain, allowingfor unobserved heterogeneity components whichsimultaneously affect the two processes. Ourfindings confirm the existence of a strongselection effect, which influences both unionformation and first birth. When controlling forthese shared factors, we find that the risk ofconception increases immediately at marriage,and it continues to be high during thefollowing four years. Entry into cohabitation,in contrast, produces a much smaller increasein the relative risk of conception. The effectof conception on union formation isparticularly strong during pregnancy, but itdeclines sharply after delivery.
154988370
The Interrelations Between Cohabitation, Marriage and First Birth in Germany and Sweden
We study the interrelationships between union-formation forms and fertility in Swedish and West German female cohorts born in 1949–1971. We apply simultaneous hazard models, permitting the presence of correlated unobserved heterogeneity. This method allows us to control for country-specific composition of the population with respect to several socio-economic variables, as well as with respect to unobserved factors jointly affecting childbearing and union formation behavior. Our results confirm that partnership formation and the transition to parenthood are partially interchangeable. Net of those selection effects, we find that the impact of being in a union on first birth is higher in Sweden than in Germany, in particular for cohabitation.
5359449
Event history analysis with stata
Contents: Preface. Introduction. Event History Data Structures. Nonparametric Descriptive Methods. Exponential Transition Rate Models. Piecewise Constant Exponential Models. Exponential Models With Time-Dependent Covariates. Parametric Models of Time-Dependence. Methods to Check Parametric Assumptions. Semiparametric Transition Rate Models. Problems of Model Specification.
6063666
Diverging destinies: How children are faring under the second demographic transition
In this article, I argue that the trends associated with the second demographic transition are following two trajectories and leading to greater disparities in children’s resources. Whereas children who were born to the most-educated women are gaining resources, in terms of parents’ time and money, those who were born to the least-educated women are losing resources. The forces behind these changes include feminism, new birth control technologies, changes in labor market opportunities, and welfare-state policies. I contend that Americans should be concerned about the growing disparity in parental resources and that the government can do more to close the gap between rich and poor children.
139104561
Union Transitions Following the Birth of a Child to Cohabiting Parents
Despite a growing interest in the family trajectories of unmarried women, there has been limited research on union transitions among cohabiting parents. Using data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, we examined how family complexity (including relationship and fertility histories), as well as characteristics of the union and birth, were associated with transitions to marriage or to separation among 1,105 women who had a birth in a cohabiting relationship. Cohabiting parents had complex relationship and fertility histories, which were tied to union transitions. Having a previous nonmarital birth was associated with a lower relative risk of marriage and a greater risk of separation. In contrast, a prior marriage or marital birth was linked to union stability (getting married or remaining cohabiting). Characteristics of the union and birth were also important. Important racial/ethnic differences emerged in the analyses. Black parents had the most complex family histories and the lowest relative risk of transitioning to marriage. Stable cohabitations were more common among Hispanic mothers, and measures of family complexity were particularly important to their relative risk of marriage. White mothers who began cohabiting after conception were the most likely to marry, suggesting that “shot-gun cohabitations” serve as a stepping-stone to marriage.
32565644
Do You Need to Shop Around?
Although age at marriage is one of the strongest and most consistent predictors of marital dissolution, few studies have attempted to explain this established association. This analysis merges marital history data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth with 1980 census data describing the quantity of spousal alternatives available to husbands and wives in the local geographic area to test one such explanation. The main hypothesis, derived from the theory of marital search, suggests that persons who marry young will be more likely than those who marry later in life to dissolve their marriage when they encounter abundant alternatives to their current spouse. Discrete-time event history analyses offer no support for this hypothesis. Although the risk of marital dissolution is highest where either husbands or wives chance numerous spousal alternatives, the impact of age at marriage on divorce is significantly weaker in marriage markets containing abundant remarriage opportunities. Some of the effect of age at marriage on marital dissolution is attributable to the detrimental impact of early marriage on educational attainment. Future research directions for explaining the inverse association between age at marriage and the risk of marital dissolution are discussed.
4981446
Religion as a Determinant of Economic and Demographic Behavior in the United States
This paper critically reviews and synthesizes research on the role of religion on various aspects of the economic and demographic behavior of individuals and families in the United States, including the choice of marital partner, union formation and dissolution, fertility, female time allocation, education, wages, and wealth. Using a theoretical framework based on Gary Becker’s contributions to the economics of the family, religious affiliation is seen to affect these outcomes because it has an impact on the costs and benefits of many interrelated decisions that people make over the life cycle. In addition, for behaviors that pertain to married couple households, affiliation matters because it is a complementary trait within the context of marriage. Religiosity, another dimension of religion, also affects economic and demographic outcomes, partly because it accentuates differences by religious affiliation, partly because of the generally beneficial effects that religious involvement has on health and well-being.
85523204
Dissolution risks in first and higher order marital and cohabiting unions
More and more people enter multiple unions during their lives, and then they may choose to either cohabit or marry. We examine the implications of this diversity in partnership trajectories by assessing dissolution risks in first and higher order marital and cohabiting unions. We use recent Norwegian survey data that contain complete retrospective union histories. We find that, when selectivity is accounted for, higher-order unions are not less stable than first unions. When dissolution risks for all possible partnership trajectories are compared, we find that former cohabitants who cohabit in a second union are as likely to break up as they were in their first cohabiting union. As soon as they enter marriage in their second unions, however, they do slightly better than first married persons. The previously married experience higher dissolution risks in their second union compared to their first, regardless of their current union type.
144633357
Sons, Daughters, and the Risk of Marital Disruption
The association between the sex of children and their parents' risk of marital disruption is examined using the June 1980 Current Population Survey. The finding is that sons reduce the risk of marital disruption by 9% more than do daughters. This difference holds across marriage cohorts, racial groups, and categories of mother's education. A compelling explanation for these findings, supported by data from the National Survey of Children, stresses a father's greater role in raising sons than daughters and his consequently greater involvement in the family. Children provide a new basis for marital cohesion, one that rests on attachments and obligations to children. For fathers, the obligations and attachments are greater if they have sons.
6621269
The relative risk and timing of divorce in families of children with an autism spectrum disorder.
We compared the occurrence and timing of divorce in 391 parents of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and a matched representative sample of parents of children without disabilities using a survival analysis. Parents of children with an ASD had a higher rate of divorce than the comparison group (23.5% vs. 13.8%). The rate of divorce remained high throughout the son's or daughter's childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood for parents of children with an ASD, whereas it decreased following the son's or daughter's childhood (after about age 8 years) in the comparison group. Younger maternal age when the child with ASD was born and having the child born later in the birth order were positively predictive of divorce for parents of children with an ASD. Findings have implications for interventions focused on ameliorating ongoing and long-term marital strains for parents of children with an ASD.
144826664
Changes in Family Composition and Marital Status in Families with a Young Child with Cognitive Delay.
Keywords:children;divorce;families;separation Background  Few studies have investigated parental separation, partnering and re-partnering among population-based cohorts of children at risk of intellectual or developmental disabilities. Methods  Secondary analysis of data extracted from Waves 1–3 of the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study. Information on the residence status of parents at Waves 1, 2 and 3 was available for 10 848 families. Results  Children with early cognitive delay (ECD) were significantly less likely than other children to be living in households with both biological parents or in households where the mother was married at all time points, including at the time of the child’s birth and when children were aged 9 months, 3 years and 5 years. Although families with a child with ECD were more likely than families with a typically developing child to experience changes in both family composition and marital status over the first 5 years of the child’s life, the net effect of these changes in family composition and marital status from the time of the child’s birth to the time the child was 5 years old was similar for both groups of families. The increased levels of family change amongst families with a child with ECD were wholly accounted for by differences in family socio-economic circumstances. Conclusions  More attention needs to be paid to describing and explaining the dynamics of family composition in the early years of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. ‘Stress reaction’ models attempting to account for rates of parental separation need to incorporate socio-economic factors.
8858389
Marital Stability and Marital Satisfaction in Families of Children with Disabilities: Chicken or Egg?.
Although much has been written suggesting that stress, grief, and other factors associated with parenting a child with disabilities results in high rates of marital discord, marital dissatisfaction, and divorce, this notion is poorly supported by research. Research demonstrates that parents of children with disabilities have marriages that exhibit the full range of function and dysfunction seen in the general population, most parents of children with disabilities have normal marriages, and the same things that predict healthy and unhealthy marriages in the general population also predict healthy and unhealthy marriages among parents of children with disabilities. A careful review of empirical studies of divorce rates of parents with and without disabilities suggests two reasonable possibilities: (1) There is no difference in divorce rates between parents of children with disabilities and parents of other children and most parents of children with disabilities do not divorce, or (2) there is a statistically significant but small increase in divorce rates among parents of children with disabilities. Even if the second possibility proves correct, it does not follow that increases in marital problems result from the children’s disabilities. It is at least equally likely that family dysfunction increases risk for divorce and disabilities in children. While a great deal of research has attempted to demonstrate that children with disabilities are somehow harmful to their parents’ marriages, very little attention has been paid to how bad marriages result in poor outcomes for children with disabilities.
23333137
The seasonality of live birth is strongly influenced by socio-demographic factors.
The number of births varies markedly by season, but the causes of this variation are not well understood. The proposed explanations include temperature or photoperiod (affecting hormonal concentrations, sperm quality or sexual activity), seasonal variation in pregnancy loss, or cultural factors. In this paper we examined whether birth seasonality is influenced by socio-demographic factors. We used data on all live births registered in the Czech Republic in 1989-1991 (n = 387 496). Differences in the degree of seasonality between socio-demographic groups (defined by maternal age, marital status, education and birth order) were examined by inspection of curves, by comparing coefficients of variations of monthly numbers of births, and by calculating the ratios of the number of births in the 3 peak months (March to May) to the number of births in the 3 lowest months (October to December). We found large differences in the size of the seasonal variation in births by socio-demographic factors. The seasonal variation was highly pronounced in mothers who were 25-34 years old, had higher education, were married, and were pregnant with their second or third child. By contrast, birth seasonality was weak in mothers who were < or =19 years or > or =35 years old, unmarried, had low education, and expected their first or fourth or higher order birth. In a multivariate model, all four socio-demographic variables contributed significantly to seasonal variation. These results suggest that the seasonality of births is, at least in this population, strongly influenced by socio-demographic factors.
143371125
Is Your Love in Vain? Another Look at Premarital Cohabitation and Divorce
In this paper we provide an empirical investigation of the association between premarital cohabitation and subsequent risk of divorce. Theoretically couples who cohabit before marriage should have a lower subsequent risk of divorce since cohabitation enables you to gather information about the match quality, and only good matches evolve into marriage. However, a considerable number of papers have come to the complete opposite conclusion. The counter-intuitive result has been justified with self-selection of cohabitants as the main argument. In the present paper, we provide new evidence concerning the relationship between premarital cohabitation and divorce.