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.     

Catholicism and marriage in the united states

This study examines the effects of a Catholic background on age at first marriage, the odds of never marrying, and the odds of ever divorcing. Estimates using Catholic upbringing are compared with estimates using Catholic at the time of the survey. A case is made that if the latter measure of Catholicism is used, serious selection bias problems occur in some cases because this measure excludes defectors and includes converts. Further, it is shown that a Catholic upbringing generally has no effect on men’s age at first marriage and has a positive effect on the age when women marry. It is also shown that older Baptist men are substantially more likely than Catholic men to experience a divorce. Older Catholic women are somewhat less likely to experience a divorce than non-Baptist Protestant women. There is no Catholic effect on the odds that younger men and women will divorce.     

Late marriage and the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa

The causes of large variation in the sizes of HIV epidemics among countries in sub-Saharan Africa are not well understood. Here we assess the potential roles of late age at marriage and a long period of premarital sexual activity as population risk factors, using ecological data from 33 sub-Saharan African countries and with individual-level data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in Kenya and Ghana in 2003. The ecological analysis finds a significant positive correlation between HIV prevalence and median age at first marriage, and between HIV prevalence and interval between first sexual intercourse and first marriage. The individual-level analysis shows that HIV infection per year of exposure is higher before than after first marriage. These findings support the hypothesis of a link between a high average age at marriage and a long period of premarital intercourse during which partner changes are relatively common and facilitate the spread of HIV.     

Child gender and the transition to marriage

We estimate the effect of a child's gender on the mother's probability of marriage or remarriage using data from the PSID Marital History and Childbirth and Adoption History Files. We find that the birth of a son speeds the transition into marriage when the child is born before the mother's first marriage. A competing-risks analysis shows that the positive effect of a son is stronger for marriages to the child's biological father than for other marriages. We find no significant effect of child gender on the mother's remarriage probabilities when the children are born within a previous marriage. These results are consistent with a marital-search model in which sons, more than daughters, increase the value of marriage relative to single parenthood.     

Bisexual men in marriage: is a positive homosexual identity and stable marriage possible?

The negative picture of mixed-orientation marriages portrayed in previous research is challenged by results from a study and two-year follow-up of a non-clinical sample of 41 spouses representing 30 marriages. Evidence suggests that more recent marriages involving a bisexual are made for positive reasons, rather than as an escape from homosexuality. A comparison of couples in which the homosexual behavior is acknowledged to those in which it is secretive suggests a positive homosexual identity can be developed in the acknowledged situation. Data from a two-year follow-up provide information on the factors which led to the stabilization of such marriages. A schema of developmental crises, decisions, and consequences is presented.     

Positioning the self

This article explores how a group of regular magazine readers interpreted representations of women's lives in women's magazines. These readers consistently evaluated magazine texts in relation to their own lives and their own conceptions of identity. They used their personal experiences and their notions of what a woman's life is really like in order to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant journalism in women's magazines. When talking about women's magazines they formulated narratives about their own identities, and they drew on various discourses that placed women's magazines in relation to their subjective experiences of ordinary everyday life. A reflexive positioning of the self was therefore crucial to their mode of interpretation. The analysis is based on qualitative in-depth interviews with subscribers to a popular Norwegian women's magazine, and the findings are discussed in the light of Anthony Giddens' theory of the reflexive self and Toril Moi's reading of Simone de Beauvoir's existentialist feminist philosophy.     

Gender differences in the marriage and cohabitation income premium*

Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I identify causal effects of marriage and cohabitation on total family income. My goals are to compare men's and women's changes in financial status upon entering unions and to assess the relative contributions of adjustments in own income, income pooling, and changes in family size. Changes in own income that are due to intrahousehold specialization prove to be minor for both men and women relative to the effects of adding another adult's income to the family total. Women gain roughly 55% in needs-adjusted, total family income, regardless of whether they cohabit or marry, whereas men's needs-adjusted income levels remain unchanged when men make these same transitions.     

Trends in marriage and divorce in Peninsular Malaysia

Summary Median age at marriage for women has risen sharply for each of the three major ethnic groups - Malays, Chinese and Indians, in Peninsular Malaysia since 1957. The sharpest rise has been recorded for Malays and Indians, whose median age at marriage was barely over 17 in 1957. A shortage of potential husbands in the traditionally sanctioned ages contributed to the rise for Malays and Indians, but was probably not the paramount reason; average age differences between the spouses narrowed, but median age at marriage for men actually rose. During the same period, the previously extremely high divorce rates amongst Malays have fallen sharply, though wide inter-state differences remain. The sharp changes in marriage patterns reflect, and in turn are partly responsible for, far-reaching social and economic changes. They have profoundly affected fertility levels and patterns, as well as intra-familial relationships.     

Child marriage in India]

Child marriages have been practiced in India for thousands of years. Even though its popularity has now decreased due to changes in law and society, it is still a major problem, causing a great deal of hardship. Even though laws prohibited child marriage as early as 1860, statistics show that, on the average, Indians marry very young (1972: females at age 17; males at age 22 years of age; 34 females and 13 males under age 15). The following are incentives to marry young and have large families: 1) religion teaches that only those with descendants go to heaven; 2) unmarried women are traditionally scorned; and 3) most importantly, economic reasons encourage people to have large families as soon as possible, e.g., male children are encouraged to marry to obtain the dowry as soon as possible and children are considered a source of income in India. Child marriage in India causes the following problems: 1) a high infant mortality rate, as much as 75% in rural areas; 2) an imbalance in the male to female ratio (1901: 970 females/1000 males; 1971: 930 females/1000 males) because women who marry young tend to lose their health earlier; 3) a population explosion: in 1971, the Indian population was found to be increasing at the rate of 225/1000.     

Education and black-white interracial marriage

This article examines competing theoretical claims regarding how an individual's education will affect his or her likelihood of interracial marriage. I demonstrate that prior models of interracial marriage have failed to adequately distinguish the joint and marginal effects of education on interracial marriage and present a model capable of distinguishing these effects. I test this model on black-white interracial marriages using 1980, 1990, and 2000 U.S. census data. The results reveal partial support for status exchange theory within black male-white female unions and strong isolation of lower-class blacks from the interracial marriage market. Structural assimilation theory is not supported because the educational attainment of whites is not related in any consistent fashion to the likelihood of interracial marriage. The strong isolation of lower-class blacks from the interracial marriage market has gone unnoticed in prior research because of the failure of prior methods to distinguish joint and marginal effects.     

Age at marriage and educational attainment in the United States

Substantial declines in age at marriage for both sexes have been observed over the past two decades in a number of western countries.¹ Data for the United States, using median ages, suggest that the decline since 1940 has been as great as that occurring during the preceding 50 years (Table I).     

Income dynamics in couples and the dissolution of marriage and cohabitation

Several studies have shown that a wife's strong (socio)economic position is associated with an increase in the risk of divorce. Less is known about such effects for cohabiting relationships. Using a unique and large-scale sample of administrative records from The Netherlands, we analyze the link between couples' income dynamics and union dissolution for married and cohabiting unions over a 10-year period. We find negative effects of household income on separation and positive effects of the woman's relative income, in line with earlier studies. The shape of the effect of the woman's relative income, however, depends on the type of union. Movements away from income equality toward a male-dominant pattern tend to increase the dissolution risk for cohabiting couples, whereas they reduce the dissolution risk for married couples. Movements away from income equality toward a female-dominant pattern (reverse specialization) increase the dissolution risks for both marriage and cohabitation. The findings suggest that equality is more protective for cohabitation, whereas specialization is more protective for marriage, although only when it fits a traditional pattern. Finally, we find that the stabilizing effects of income equality are more pronounced early in the marriage and that income equality also reduces the dissolution risk for same-sex couples.     

Risk preferences and the timing of marriage and childbearing

The existing literature on marriage and fertility decisions pays little attention to the roles played by risk preferences and uncertainty. However given uncertainty regarding the availability of suitable marriage partners, the ability to contracept, and the ability to conceive, women's risk preferences might be expected to play an important role in marriage and fertility timing decisions. By using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), I find that measured risk preferences have a significant effect on the timing of both marriage and fertility. Highly risk-tolerant women are more likely to delay marriage, consistent with either a search model of marriage or a risk-pooling explanation. In addition, risk preferences affect fertility timing in a way that differs by marital status and education, and that varies over the life cycle. Greater tolerance for risk leads to earlier births at young ages, consistent with these women being less likely to contracept effectively. In addition, as the subgroup of college-educated, unmarried women nears the end of their fertile periods, highly risk-tolerant women are likely to delay childbearing relative to their more risk-averse counterparts and are therefore less likely to become mothers. These findings may have broader implications for both individual and societal well-being.     

Demography of the marriage market in the United States

In this paper, a new index designed to measure the relative availability of unmarried men and women is introduced. Termed the "Availability Ratio," the measure is defined as the number of suitable persons divided by the average competition. Suitability, in turn, is defined in terms of race, age and education. After various experimental tests, particular age and eeducational constraints were empirically derived from marriage data. Persons of opposite sex sharing living quarters are tested as unavailable. Estimates are also made of those presumed to be unsuitable on the basis of the % of persons aged 45-74 who have never married. Adjustments for the census undercount are given. 1980 and 1970 estimates are presented for the US population. Subsequent analyses will focus on metropolitan areas, which are more likely to function as actual marriage markets in contrast to the nation as a whole. The substantive evidence indicates that women under 25 are in a good position to find a mate, but that after this age, their prospects deteriorate rapidly. The outlook is especially poor for the more educated women at older ages, especially black women. At ages 40-49, for example, there are fewer than 3 suitable men available for every 10 college-educated women. The results suggest that the combination of preferences of women for older men (or men's tastes for younger women), combined with higher survival rates for women at older ages, results in a very unbalanced market situationn for all but the youngest cohorts of men and women.     

Economic opportunities,marriage squeezes and the propensity to marry: An economic analysis of period marriage rates in England and Wales

An economic model of the decision to marry has been developed by Gary Becker and is now part of the ‘new home economics’. From it one can deduce that the propensity to marry is a function of the relative earning capacities of men and women, the relative scarcity of unmarried persons of the opposite sex and real income. The effects of changes in these variables on the annual first marriage rates of men aged 16–19, 20–24 and 25–29 and women aged 16–19 and 20–24 respectively are estimated over the post-war period. It is found that women's earning capacity relative to men's has a particularly strong negative effect on marriage rates, and that the decline in first marriage rates during the 1970s was primarily attributable to the growing economic opportunities for women. As demographic studies have suggested, the relative numbers of bachelors and spinsters of particular ages (‘marriage squeezes’) also have a significant impact, and there is evidence of substitution in the ages of marriage partners in response to such ‘squeezes’. The income elasticity of marriage is only found to be significant among men below age 25 and women below age 20, and it increases as we move down the age distribution. This suggests the ‘liquidity constraints’ influence the timing of marriage among young people. In sum, this economic model is able to account for over 90 per cent of the post-war variation in young persons' marriage rates.     

Socioeconomic marriage differentials in Australia and New Zealand

While marriage rates are relatively stable among better-educated men and women, they are rapidly declining among those with low educational attainment. This development has been recognized in the US as a new socioeconomic pattern of marriage. This article uses census data to show that socioeconomic marriage differentials are also increasing in Australia and New Zealand. These differentials have previously been noted independently of each other and of the international picture. In synthesizing the antipodean data, the article documents the new socioeconomic marriage pattern as an international phenomenon. This article further considers the extent to which the available explanations for the new marriage pattern fit the antipodean setting. In general, the factors identified as important in the North American setting are applicable to both Australia and New Zealand. In particular, the poor marriage prospects of men with low educational attainment appear to be common to these post-industrial economies with minimalist welfare states.     

Law, marriage and illegitimacy in nineteenth-century Germany

Abstract Concern arose among legislators in several German States during the first half of the nineteenth century about overpopulation and increasing numbers of the impoverished classes. This led them to pass legislation restricting marriage to those considered by the community authorities as morally and financially capable of rearing a family. Census data at the time of the repeal of these laws indicate the extent to which they succeeded in repressing marriage. Declining illegitimacy which paralleled the repeal, however, suggests strongly that the legislation was far less effectual in limiting reproduction than it was in preventing marriage. Added confirmation of this interpretation is provided by the contrasting nuptiality and illegitimacy patterns of German states with liberal marriage regulations.     

Beyond single mothers: Cohabitation and marriage in the AFDC program

We investigate the extent and implications of cohabitation and marriage among U.S. welfare recipients. An analysis of four data sets (the Current Population Survey, the National Survey of Families and Households, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth) shows significant numbers of cohabitors among recipients of AFDC. An even more surprising finding is the large number of married women on welfare. We also report the results of a telephone survey of state AFDC agencies conducted to determine state rules governing cohabitation and marriage. The survey results indicate that, in a number of respects, AFDC rules encourage cohabitation. Finally, we conduct an analysis of the impact of AFDC rules on cohabitation, marriage, and single motherhood and find weak evidence in support of incentives to cohabit.