Economic Well-being and Cohabitation: Another Nonmetro Disadvantage?

Our study examines residential variability in the prevalence of cohabiting households, the extent to which children are present, characteristics of the household head, and multiple indicators of economic well-being. Despite a lower prevalence of cohabiting households in nonmetropolitan compared to other areas, a larger proportion contain children. For all measures considered, economic well-being is lowest for cohabiting households with children in nonmetropolitan areas, and compared to their metro counterparts a larger proportion receive all forms of public assistance. The higher likelihood of poverty among nonmetropolitan cohabiting households with children is not explained by the characteristics of the household heads in multivariate models predicting household poverty. Cohabitation clearly has different family and economic implications in nonmetropolitan than in other residential areas.