Childbearing within Marriage and Consensual Union in Latin America, 1980–2010

This article compares the fertility patterns of women in consensual union and marriage in 13 Latin American countries, using census microdata from the four most recent census rounds and a methodological approach that combines the own‐children method and Poisson regression. Results show that in all these countries, fertility is slightly higher within consensual union than marriage and that the age pattern of fertility is very similar in marital and non‐marital unions. Further analyses show that over the period considered, childbearing within a consensual union has changed from rare to increasingly common, although not yet mainstream, for highly educated women in most countries examined. Results show that in Latin America, at least since the 1980s, women's childbearing patterns depend on their age and on their being in a conjugal relationship, but not on the legal nature of this relationship. The similarities in reproductive behavior between marital and non‐marital unions are not confined to the socially disadvantaged groups, but apply as well to the better off.     

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.     

Consensual partnering in Australia: A review and 1991 census profile

This paper is the second in a two-part examination of consensual partnering in Australia. The first part reviewed relevant literature and the deficiencies of census data for capturing the cohabiting population, and presented the basic demography of that population. This part extends the 1991 Census profile of the phenomenon. It traverses socio-demographic (religion and ethnicity), socio-economic (housing, labour force status, occupation and education) and geographic (residential mobility and residential location) attributes of those in consensual unions. It also briefly compares never-married and ever-married cohabitors as two distinct subgroups of the cohabiting population.     

Religion as a determinant of marital stability

Using data from the 1987–1988 National Survey of Families and Households, this paper studies the role of the religious composition of unions as a determinant of marital stability. With the exceptions of Mormons and individuals with no religious identification, stability is found to be remarkably similar across the various types of homogamous unions. Consistent with the notion that religion is a complementary marital trait, interfaith unions have generally higher rates of dissolution than intrafaith unions. The destabilizing effect of out-marriage varies inversely with the similarity in beliefs and practices of the two religions as well as with the mutual tolerance embodied in their respective doctrines. The results also suggest that religious compatibility between spouses at the time of marriage has a large influence on marital stability, rivaling in magnitude that of age at marriage and, at least for Protestants and Catholics, dominating any adverse effects of differences in religious background.     

Dissolution of first unions in Colombia,Panama, and Peru

An analysis of marital histories from World Fertility Survey data in Colombia, Panama, and Peru indicates a high level of union dissolution: the probabilities of a first union ending by separation within twenty years of the onset of union equal .27, .40, and .18 in the three countries respectively. Dissolution probabilities are especially high among women with young ages at first union and among women residing in urban areas. For all subgroups studied, consensual unions are characterized by several times the risk of separation of legal marriages. Consensual unions are especially frequent among women in rural areas, women with little education and women who enter unions at young ages. The different prevalence of consensual unions among the different subgroups affects the associations between union stability and various correlates so that it becomes essential to investigate the factors affecting union stability for both consensual unions and legal marriages. In spite of high dissolution rates, remarriage rates in all three countries are also high, as are the percentages of time spent in a union. Hence, the potential effects of voluntary disruption of unions on fertility appear to be modest.     

Intermarriage: Opportunity and Preference

The two-sex problem in the analysis of nuptiality can be reduced to the problem of separating factors that determine the opportunity to choose a certain category of marriage partner from factors representing preference for the same type of partner. A theory that enables opportunity factors to be separated from preference factors is presented in this paper, in the context of analysing the phenomenon of intermarriage. An index called ‘the marital index of social distance’ is derived and its properties discussed. The index, representing preference factors free of opportunity factors, can be calculated easily from marriage statistics detailing group affiliations of brides and grooms. The theory is applied to data on in-marriage of Australian sub-populations defined by birthplace, for the period 1954–83. It is shown that marital indices of social distance have remained relatively constant over time compared with in-marriage rates which have fluctuated according to representation in the marriage market.     

“Living in sin” and marriage: A matching model

This paper develops a two sided matching model of premarital cohabitation and marriage in which premarital cohabitation serves as a period of learning. We solve for the optimal policy to be followed by individuals by treating the model as a three stage dynamic programming problem. We find that couples are more discriminating when forming marital unions than when forming cohabiting unions. Cohabitation unions arise among members of the same “class” and there is overlap between the classes formed by marital unions and cohabiting unions. This implies that some cohabiting unions progress to marriage while others do not, a finding borne out by empirical studies. Received: 4 November 1999/Accepted: 4 September 2000     

Pathways to a Stable Union? Pregnancy and Childbearing Among Cohabiting and Married Couples

This study analyzes the stability of cohabiting and marital unions following a first birth. But unlike previous research, it compares the subsequent trajectories of unions that began with a pregnancy to those in which conceptions came after coresidence. The U.S. data from the 2006–2010 and 2011–2013 cross-sectional files of the National Survey of Family Growth indicate that roughly 1-in-5 first births were associated with rapid transitions from conception into either cohabitation or marriage. Moving in together following a pregnancy—especially an unintended one—is unlikely to lead to marital success or union stability. Compared with marital unions, dissolution rates following birth were particularly high for couples who entered a cohabiting union following conception. Only a small minority of these couples married (i.e., less than one-third), and these marriages experienced high dissolution rates. The results also suggest that the most committed cohabiting couples got married after finding themselves pregnant, leaving behind the most dissolution-prone cohabiting couples. The American family system is being transformed by newly emerging patterns of fertility among cohabiting couples.     

Cohabitation and family formation in Japan

This article documents the prevalence, duration, and marital outcomes of cohabiting unions in Japan. It then examines the correlates of cohabitation experiences and also describes differences in the family-formation trajectories of women who have and have not cohabited. Cohabitation has increased rapidly among recent cohorts of women, and cohabiting unions in Japan tend to be relatively short in duration and are almost as likely to dissolve as to result in marriage. Life table analyses demonstrate that the cumulative probabilities of marriage and parenthood within marriage are roughly similar for women who did and those who did not cohabit. The most notable difference is in the pathways to family formation, with women who cohabited more likely both to marry subsequent to pregnancy and to delay childbearing within marriage. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that cohabiting unions in Japan are best viewed as an emerging prelude to marriage rather than as an alternative to marriage or singlehood. We conclude with speculation about the likelihood of further increases in cohabitation in Japan and the potential implications for marriage and fertility.     

Extra-Marital Cohabitation and Fertility

In France, as in many other Western European countries, attitudes and behaviour regarding marriage have changed drastically over the past 20 years. One of the major changes has been the increasing propensity to begin one's matrimonial career outside marriage: two-thirds of first unions begun in 1983–85 were outside marriage. A special survey was carried out at the end of 1985 to collect detailed information on life-courses for a sample of 4,091 women and men aged between 21 and 44 years. In a previous paper, we focused on the characteristics and on the outcome of first unions, with no account of interactions with fertility, which will be the guideline of the present paper.     

From Privilege to Prevalence: Contextual Effects of Women’s Schooling on African Marital Timing

In Africa and elsewhere, educated women tend to marry later than their less-educated peers. Beyond being an attribute of individual women, education is also an aggregate phenomenon: the social meaning of a woman’s educational attainment depends on the educational attainments of her age-mates. Using data from 30 countries and 246 birth cohorts across sub-Saharan Africa, we investigate the impact of educational context (the percentage of women in a country cohort who ever attended school) on the relationship between a woman’s educational attainment and her marital timing. In contexts where access to education is prevalent, the marital timing of uneducated and highly educated women is more similar than in contexts where attending school is limited to a privileged minority. This across-country convergence is driven by uneducated women marrying later in high-education contexts, especially through lower rates of very early marriages. However, within countries over time, the marital ages of women from different educational groups tend to diverge as educational access expands. This within-country divergence is most often driven by later marriage among highly educated women, although divergence in some countries is driven by earlier marriage among women who never attended school.     

Migration and fertility in Puerto Rico

Abstract In an investigation based on special tabulations of the 25 per cent sample from the 1960 Census of Population for Puerto Rico, it is found that migration experience tends to be associated with fertility for various marital statuses, including consensual unions, and for rural, urban and metropolitan residence. The findings cannot be attributed to variations in age composition among the various categories as age standardization and age-specificcomparisons yield similar results. However, it is also found that rural-urban and consensually-legally mated differentials in fertility cannot be accounted for by variations in the migration variables that are examined. Thus, consistently higher fertility is found for non-migrants than for migrants; for consensually mated than for legally married and for rural than for urban or metropolitan residents. With a single exception, women in consensual unions, fertility is lower for women in the San Juan metropolitan area than in the other urban areas.     

Age at marriage and proportions marrying

This paper deals with the recent widespread increase in marriage rates in the Western world. The principal materials used are data on the proportions single in each age group at various times. These data are used to estimate how far the ‘marriage boom’ has reflected decreases in the proportions of persons remaining single throughout life or reductions in the age at marriage of those who do marry. The conclusion is that changes of both types have occurred; the mean age at marriage has been declining in several countries at a rate of more than one-tenth of a year per annum. A number of ancillary technical problems relating to the analysis of nuptiality are discussed.     

Cohabitation and marriage in the 1980s

Using cohabitation and marriage histories collected in 1985 from 23-year-old women and men, this study investigates the process of union formation, considering transitions from single life into cohabitation and marriage. The outcomes of cohabitation are also considered--both the dissolution of unions and the transformation of cohabiting unions into marriage. These data indicate that large proportions of men and women experience cohabitation fairly early in the life course. At the same time, many cohabiting unions are dissolved fairly quickly and numerous others are soon transformed into marriages. Thus even though cohabitation will be experienced by many, most people will continue to spend substantially more time in marital unions than in cohabiting unions.     

The effects of ethnicity and educational attainment on Jewish marriage patterns: Changes in Israel, 1957–1995

Abstract. This paper presents a study of changes in marriage patterns among the Jewish population of Israel over nearly 40 years. Using data from four Israeli Censuses spanning experience from the late 1950s to the mid 1990s, we employ Schoen's harmonic mean model in a multivariate framework to consider, simultaneously, changes over time in age-specific marriage rates by ethnicity and educational attainment. Our analyses point to a number of clear and interesting findings: (1) an increasingly positive association between marriage and educational attainment, especially for women; (2) the continuing central role of ethnicity in mate selection, despite important declines in ethnic endogamy over the period; (3) a decrease in the prominence of unions of ‘exchange’; (4) some evidence of increasing ‘block’ endogamy among Jews of Asian and African origin; and (5) a small increase in educational homogamy over the period. Interpretations and implications of these findings are discussed.     

Before and After “I Do”: Marriage Processes for Mid-Life Gay and Lesbian Married Couples

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study examines how mid-life gay and lesbian married individuals articulate their decision to marry. Using 2013 data from 30 mid-life couples in Massachusetts, this study challenges previous literature that conceptualized marriage as entirely positive or negative for same-sex individuals. Mid-life individuals’ unique social and historical context influence their experiences of marriage, as mid-life individuals have witnessed the rise and feasibility of marriage equality, have formed relationships outside of the bounds of marriage, and have been in committed relationships long before they married. Using the framework of ambivalence, our findings provide three main contributions to the literature. First, we show that marital ambivalence is a common experience in our sample. Second, we detail how marital ambivalence is indicative of the age, life-course stage, and length of relationship for mid-life lesbian and gay individuals. Third, we explore ambivalence at the level of the relationship, not just as an individual experience. This study provides new insight into how sexuality shapes both intimate relationship dynamics as well as the effect of same-sex marriage on LGBT communities and identities.     

Crossing Boundaries: Nativity,Ethnicity, and Mate Selection

The influx of immigrants has increased diversity among ethnic minorities and indicates that they may take multiple integration paths in American society. Previous research on ethnic integration has often focused on panethnic differences, and few have explored ethnic diversity within a racial or panethnic context. Using 2000 U.S. census data for Puerto Rican–, Mexican-, Chinese-, and Filipino-origin individuals, we examine differences in marriage and cohabitation with whites, with other minorities, within a panethnic group, and within an ethnic group by nativity status. Ethnic endogamy is strong and, to a lesser extent, so is panethnic endogamy. Yet, marital or cohabiting unions with whites remain an important path of integration but differ significantly by ethnicity, nativity, age at arrival, and educational attainment. Meanwhile, ethnic differences in marriage and cohabitation with other racial or ethnic minorities are strong. Our analysis supports that unions with whites remain a major path of integration, but other paths of integration also become viable options for all ethnic groups.     

Polygynists and Their Wives in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Analysis of Five Demographic and Health Surveys

Differential polygyny in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia is investigated using individual-level Demographic and Health Surveys data. As well as contrasting polygynists' first wives with women in monogamous unions, the analysis distinguishes higher-order wives from first wives. This permits study of the determinants of the prevalence and intensity of polygyny respectively. Polygyny and other aspects of marriage interlock in very similar ways in all five countries. Individuals' experience of polygyny tends to reflect their luck in the marriage market rather than their socio-economic characteristics. While polygyny is less prevalent in urban areas, other socio-economic factors are important only in Kenya and Zambia, the two countries where less than 25 per cent of married women are in polygynous unions. The prevalence and intensity of polygyny are negatively associated. Thus, any drop in the prevalence of polygyny in Africa may be accompanied by a rise in the number of wives per polygynist.     

The Baby Boom and Its Causes: What We Know and What We Need to Know

This study analyzes the timing, magnitude, and volume of the mid‐twentieth century baby boom in European and non‐European Western countries. The baby boom is found to have been especially strong in the non‐European countries, fairly strong in some European countries, and quite weak in others. While the boom has often been linked with postwar economic growth and the recuperation of births postponed during the Depression era, we argue that this is only a limited part of the story. In most cases the recovery of the birth rate started well before the end of World War II, a fact not accounted for by existing theories. We investigate the roles played by the recovery of period as well as cohort fertility, the underlying marriage boom, and the recovery of marital fertility. We identify major puzzles for future research, including the reasons for strongly declining ages at marriage and the role played by contraceptive failure in the rise of high‐parity births.