Opportunities to Meet: Occupational Education and Marriage Formation in Young Adulthood

Explanations for the positive association between education and marriage in the United States emphasize the economic and cultural attractiveness of having a college degree in the marriage market. However, educational attainment may also shape the opportunities that men and women have to meet other college-educated partners, particularly in contexts with significant educational stratification. We focus on work—and the social ties that it supports—and consider whether the educational composition of occupations is important for marriage formation during young adulthood. Employing discrete-time event-history methods using the NLSY-97, we find that occupational education is positively associated with transitioning to first marriage and with marrying a college-educated partner for women but not for men. Moreover, occupational education is positively associated with marriage over cohabitation as a first union for women. Our findings call attention to an unexplored, indirect link between education and marriage that, we argue, offers insight into why college-educated women in the United States enjoy better marriage prospects.     

Rethinking the Two-Body Problem: The Segregation of Women Into Geographically Dispersed Occupations

Empirical research on the family cites the tendency for couples to relocate for husbands’ careers as evidence against the gender neutrality of household economic decisions. For these studies, occupational segregation is a concern because occupations are not random by sex and mobility is not random by occupation. I find that the tendency for households to relocate for husbands’ careers is better explained by the segregation of women into geographically dispersed occupations rather than by the direct prioritization of men’s careers. Among never-married workers, women relocate for work less often than men, and the gender effect disappears after occupational segregation is accounted for. Although most two-earner families feature husbands in geographically clustered jobs involving frequent relocation for work, families are no less likely to relocate for work when it belongs to the wife. I conclude that future research in household mobility should treat occupational segregation occurring prior to marriage rather than gender bias within married couples as the primary explanation for the prioritization of husbands’ careers in household mobility decisions.     

婚前同居对初婚年龄的影响研究——基于Heckman二阶段模型的分析

在现代社会中,初婚年龄持续攀升,婚前同居现象越来越多地出现。那么婚前同居与初婚年龄之间有没有关系?本文基于婚前同居对离婚影响的选择假说与经历假说进一步探讨两种假说与初婚年龄之间的关系。选择假说认为同居者自身特征促使他们追求思想解放,消极地影响着婚姻稳定性,因此与其同居伴侣之间并不想建立一个长期的契约。由此推测这些积极影响同居的特征因素会给结婚带来消极影响,婚前同居就会推延初婚年龄;经历假说认为共同生活的经历将会改变同居者对婚姻的认识,他们不再强烈地致力于追求婚姻的身份。他们将会接受婚前同居这种暂时性的本质。很多夫妇认为同居提供了一个婚姻的替代品,结婚的欲望由此下降。因此这也将推延初婚年龄。除两个假说外,同居者想要通过同居搜集更多对方的信息,这种想要更多地了解对方的想法也将推延初婚年龄。在理论分析的基础上,本文基于2010年CFPS抽样调查数据,采用Heckman二阶段模型纠正婚前同居的自选择性带来的偏误并检验婚前同居推延初婚年龄的研究假设。研究结果发现婚前同居使女性与男性的初婚年龄分别推迟了0.415岁与0.868岁。在控制婚前同居的自选择性后,婚前同居对女性与男性初婚年龄的影响仍然很...     

Cohabiting and marriage during young men’s career-development process

Using recently released cohabitation data for the male sample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, first interviewed in 1979, I conducted multinomial discrete-time event-history analyses of how young men's career-development process affects both the formation and the dissolution of cohabiting unions. For a substantial proportion of young men, cohabitation seemed to represent an adaptive strategy during a period of career immaturity, whereas marriage was a far more likely outcome for both stably employed cohabitors and noncohabitors alike. Earnings positively affected the entry into either a cohabiting or marital union but exhibited a strong threshold effect. Once the men were in cohabiting unions, however, earnings had little effect on the odds of marrying. Men with better long-run socioeconomic prospects were far more likely to marry from either the noncohabiting or cohabiting state, and this was particularly true for blacks.     

Until work do us part: Labour migration and occupational stratification in non-cohabiting marriage

While recent decades have seen considerable research on cohabitation without marriage, the study of marriage without cohabitation has not fared as well. Prior work on the latter has emphasized the importance of occupational stratification, but ignored the social context around occupation, particularly regarding labour mobility and economic development. In this paper, we outline the significance of contemporary labour mobility and concomitant occupational stratification for the risk of non-cohabiting marriage, and use data from the IPUMS–International project to provide a cross-national accounting of non-cohabiting marriage. We focus on two issues: first, how does prevalence vary across countries, across time, and with respect to economic development? Second, how do the core dynamics of labour mobility—including migration, occupational status, and economic development—influence the probability of non-cohabiting marriage? Results indicate broad cross-national differences in prevalence, increasing risk over time, and a pattern of accumulating risk associated with multifaceted social disadvantage.     

Estimating a marriage matching model with spillover effects

We use marriage matching functions to study how marital patterns change when population supplies change. Specifically, we use a behavioral marriage matching function with spillover effects to rationalize marriage and cohabitation behavior in contemporary Canada. The model can estimate a couple's systematic gains to marriage and cohabitation relative to remaining single. These gains are invariant to changes in population supplies. Instead, changes in population supplies redistribute these gains between a couple. Although the model is behavioral, it is nonparametric. It can fit any observed cross-sectional marriage matching distribution. We use the estimated model to quantify the impacts of gender differences in mortality rates and the baby boom on observed marital behavior in Canada. The higher mortality rate of men makes men scarcer than women. We show that the scarceness of men modestly reduced the welfare of women and increased the welfare of men in the marriage market. On the other hand, the baby boom increased older men's net gains to entering the marriage market and lowered middle-aged women's net gains.     

Entering first union: the choice between cohabitation and marriage among women in Italy and Spain

While in Spain and Italy cohabitation has not acquired the same role that it has had in Northern Europe, in both of these Mediterranean countries cohabitation is no longer a marginal phenomenon. Moreover, the nature of cohabiting couples is diverse. According to the most recent FFS data, first cohabitations constitute a temporary arrangement that usually ends in the formalization of the union (marriage), and within 5 years 28.9 % of first cohabitations in Spain and 51.7 % in Italy were transformed into marriages. Within a Western context of changes in union formation patterns, the study of the choice between marriage and cohabitation as first union is of great significance. Is it possible to identify a shared pattern of union formation in Mediterranean countries like Italy and Spain? The purpose of this paper is to examine the choice between cohabitation and marriage as first union (timing, incidence and determinants) using a comparative life course approach. For the analysis of the timing and prevalence, cumulative incidence curves are calculated by birth cohorts and regions; while two semiparametric competing-risks models are estimated for the determinants of first partnership formation (one for each country), considering birth cohort, parental separation, educational attainment, employment status, age at leaving the parental home and birth of a child (the last three time-varying) as independent variables.     

Cohabitation and Marital Expectations Among Single Millennials in the U.S.

Cohabitation has surpassed marriage as the most common union experience in young adulthood. We capitalize on a new opportunity to examine both marital and cohabitation expectations among young single women in recently collected, nationally representative data (National Survey of Family Growth 2011–2015) (N?=?1467). In the US there appears to be a ‘stalled’ second demographic transition as single young adult (ages 18–24) women have stronger expectations to marry than cohabit and the vast majority expects to, or has, already married. Among young women expecting to marry, the majority (68%) expect to cohabit with their future spouse but about one-third expect to follow a traditional relationship pathway into marriage (to marry without cohabiting first). In addition, women from disadvantaged backgrounds report the lowest expectations to marry, but there is no education gradient in expectations to cohabit. Marriage expectations follow a “diverging destinies” pattern, which stresses a growing educational divide, but this is not the case for cohabitation expectations. Our results, based on recently collected data, provide insight into the contemporary context of union formation decision-making for the millennial generation.

     

Has the reciprocal relationship between employment and marriage changed for men? An analysis of the life histories of men born in The Netherlands between 1930 and 1970

The study presented here analyses the reciprocal relationship for men between employment career and union formation and examines whether this relationship changed across twentieth-century birth cohorts. Competing hypotheses about trends are described, using notions of role-specialization, spouse support, and uncertainty. The study is based on an investigation of the life histories of 2,795 men in the Netherlands who were born between the 1930s and the 1960s, and confirms earlier findings by showing that employment fosters marriage while marriage protects men from becoming unemployed. There is also a relationship between employment and cohabitation but it is weaker in both directions. However, the relationship between marriage or cohabitation and occupational mobility is less clear, suggesting that the economic benefits of marriage cannot be generalized to the occupational domain. Although it is commonly believed that the link for men between career and marriage has weakened over time, our comparison of birth cohorts shows that in fact this is not the case.     

Union formation in fragile families

In this article, we use data from a new longitudinal survey--the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study--to examine union formation among unmarried parents who have just had a child together. We used multinomial logistic regression to estimate the effects of economic, cultural/interpersonal, and other factors on whether (relative to having no romantic relationship) parents are romantically involved and living apart, cohabiting, or married to each other about one year after the child's birth. Net of other factors (including baseline relationship status), women's education and men's earnings encourage marriage. Cultural and interpersonal factors also have strong effects: women's trust of men, both parents' positive attitudes toward marriage, and both parents' assessment of the supportiveness in their relationship encourage marriage. Supportiveness also encourages cohabitation, while fathers having a problem with alcohol or drugs and reporting higher conflict in the relationship discourage cohabitation: Fathers' physical violence deters couples' remaining in romantic nonresident relationships.     

Socio-economic resources and first-union formation in Finland, cohorts born 1969-81

Social scientists generally agree that better individual economic prospects enhance the probability of marriage for men, whereas there are conflicting views with regard to women. Moreover, it is argued that cohabitation does not require as strong an economic foundation as marriage. The aim of this study, which was based on Finnish register data, was to find out how the socio-economic resources of young adults affect first-union formation, and whether the effects vary by sex or union type. The results show that high education, labour-force participation, and high income seem to promote union formation. The findings are similar for women and men, which is plausible given the comparatively gender-egalitarian societal context. Similar factors encourage entry into both union types, although the union-promoting effects of university-level education and stable employment are stronger in the marriage models, suggesting that long-term prospects are more important when marriage is contemplated.     

Cleaning up their act: The effects of marriage and cohabitation on licit and illicit drug use

We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate changes in binge drinking, marijuana use, and cigarette smoking surrounding young adults' first experiences of cohabitation and marriage. Both marriage and cohabitation are accompanied by decreases in some risk behaviors, but reductions surrounding marriage are larger and most consistent, particularly for men. Binge drinking and marijuana use respond to these events, especially marriage, but smoking does not.     

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.     

Subjective Well-being and Partnership Dynamics: Are Same-Sex Relationships Different?

We analyze Dutch panel data to investigate whether partnership has a causal effect on subjective well-being. As in previous studies, we find that, on average, being in a partnership improves well-being. Well-being gains of marriage are larger than those of cohabitation. The well-being effects of partnership formation and disruption are symmetric. We also find that marriage improves well-being for both younger and older cohorts, whereas cohabitation benefits only the younger cohort. Our main contribution to the literature is on well-being effects of same-sex partnerships. We find that these effects are homogeneous to sexual orientation. Gender differences exist in the well-being effects of same-sex partnerships: females are happier cohabiting, whereas marriage has a stronger well-being effect on males.     

Premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital

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.     

Nonmarital cohabitation and fertility in the United States and Western Europe

The increasing popularity of nonmarital cohabitation and a decline in marriage rates in the United States and Western Europe has led to a growing research interest in cohabitation without marriage and its relationship to traditional marriage. This article examines the evidence on the prevalence of cohabitation and the characteristics of cohabitants, and focuses on the childbearing behavior of cohabiting couples who are not married. The evidence to date suggests that in Denmark and Sweden cohabitation is widespread, especially among young people, and childbearing within cohabitational unions is relatively common. In the rest of Western Europe and in the United States, cohabitation is less common and fertility is less frequent. Fertility will be affected to the extent that couples delay having children until they are married. Policy and law concerning cohabitants and their children are changing rapidly. Most of these changes have resulted in a blurring of the distinctions between married and unmarried couples and between legitimate and illegitimate children.     

Transitions From Sexual Relationships Into Cohabitation and Beyond

Much research on cohabitation has focused on transitions from cohabitation to marriage or dissolution, but less is known about how rapidly women progress into cohabitation, what factors are associated with the tempo to shared living, and whether the timing into cohabitation is associated with subsequent marital transitions. We use data from the 2006–2013 National Survey of Family Growth to answer these questions among women whose most recent sexual relationship began within 10 years of the interview. Life table results indicate that transitions into cohabitation are most common early in sexual relationships; nearly one-quarter of women had begun cohabiting within six months of becoming sexually involved. Multivariate analyses reveal important social class disparities in the timing to cohabitation. Not only are women from more-advantaged backgrounds significantly less likely to cohabit, but those who do cohabit enter shared living at significantly slower tempos than women whose mothers lacked a college degree. In addition, among sexual relationships that transitioned into cohabiting unions, college-educated women were significantly more likely to transition into marriage than less-educated women. Finally, although the tempo effect is only weakly significant, women who moved in within the first year of their sexual relationship demonstrated lower odds of marrying than did women who deferred cohabiting for over a year. Relationship processes are diverging by social class, contributing to inequality between more- and less-advantaged young adults.     

Marital dissolution among the 1958 British birth cohort: The role of cohabitation

This paper investigates the effect of previous cohabitation on marital stability among the 1958 British birth cohort. Prospective data from the National Child Development Study are used to investigate the way in which family background factors and early lifecourse experiences, including cohabitation, affect the risk of first marriage dissolution by age 33. Discrete time logistic regression hazards models are used to analyse the risk of separation in the first eight years of marriage. Many socio-economic and family background factors are found to act through more intermediate determinants, such as age at marriage and the timing of childbearing, to affect the risk of separation. Previous cohabitation with another partner and premarital cohabitation are both associated with higher rates of marital breakdown. The effect of premarital cohabitation is attenuated but remains significant once the characteristics of cohabitors are controlled, and cannot be explained by the longer time spent in a partnership.     

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.