Consensual partnering in Australia: A review and 1991 census profile

This paper is the first part of a two-part examination of consensual partnering in Australia. It reviews the Australian literature on consensual partnering, summarizing evidence of its proliferation since the mid-1960s and also the findings of investigations into its nature and the personal attributes that predispose some people more than others to adopt it. It then discusses the shortcomings of Australian census data as a source for studying consensual unions, before using data from the 1991 Census to present the first elements in a comprehensive profile of the cohabiting population. These cover the basic demography of consensual partnering: the ages, marital statuses and family type distributions of those involved. The second author contributed to this paper while a student of Graduate Studies in Demography, The Australian National University. Views expressed are those of the authors, and are not necessarily those of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.