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BACKGROUND Previous studies on the role of partner choice in relationship dissolution have shown that exogamous marriages often have higher divorce risks. Yet, given that these studies focus only on marriages, it remains unclear whether the same dynamics can be seen in unmarried cohabiting couples, or what the exact role of a premarital cohabitation period is. OBJECTIVE This paper aims to examine whether the link between union dissolution and endogamy differs across relationship types by comparing marriages with and without a period of premarital cohabitation and unmarried cohabiting couples. METHODS Based on survival analyses and multivariate event history models, this study analyzes union dissolution risks among married and unmarried cohabiting couples with at least one partner of Belgian, Southern European, Turkish, Moroccan, Congolese, Burundian, or Rwandan descent. We use longitudinal data from the Belgian National and Social Security registers for a sample of couples formed between 1999 and 2001. RESULTS The results indicated that exogamous direct marriages have substantially higher risks of relationship dissolution. Yet, differences in dissolution risks between exogamous and endogamous couples with and without a migrant background become smaller or disappear entirely when unmarried cohabitation is involved. CONTRIBUTION This paper contributes to the literature on endogamy and union dissolution by going beyond the study of marriages. In contexts where unmarried cohabitation has become a common entry point to relationship formation but still has different meanings among majority and minority populations, this paper shows that cohabitation can no longer be disregarded when studying the link between endogamy and relationship dissolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Barriers to intermarriage are more formidable than barriers to interracial cohabitation. Relative to same-race couples, a higher share of interracial couples cohabits with their nonmarital partners. This raises the question: Does the social significance of cohabitation differ for interracial and same-race couples? OBJECTIVE We compared the stability and outcome of first cohabitations prior to any marriage and the association between premarital cohabitation and subsequent marriage by couples' joint race/ethnicity. METHODS Using data from the 2002 and 2006-2019 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), we estimated discrete-time event history models to predict differences in the stability of cohabitations and subsequent marriages by couples' joint race/ethnicity. RESULTS The stability and outcomes of White--Black cohabitations were similar to those of samerace Black cohabitations, whereas the stability of White--Hispanic cohabitations fell in between those of their same-race White and Hispanic counterparts. Premarital cohabitation was generally positively associated with higher odds of marital dissolution, but it was negatively associated with the odds of marital dissolution for White--Black couples. CONTRIBUTION Considerable heterogeneity exists in the social significance of interracial cohabitation. The challenges of crossing racial barriers in union formation may contribute to distinct union trajectories for interracial couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Understanding the trend toward later and less marriage is particularly important in lowfertility societies where alternatives to marriage are limited and childbearing outside of marriage remains rare. OBJECTIVE Our goal in this paper is to advance our understanding of the wide variety of explanations offered for later and less marriage in Japan by focusing explicitly on marriage intentions and desires. METHODS Using two sources of nationally representative data, we describe the prevalence of positive, negative, and passive marriage intentions and desires among men and women who have never been married. We also examine socioeconomic differences in intentions, patterns of marriage desires across young adulthood, and relationships between marriage desires and outcomes. By linking three pathways to later and less marriage (rejection of marriage, failure to realize marriage desires, and unplanned drifting into singlehood) to specific theoretical frameworks, we generate indirect insights into explanations for later and less marriage. CONCLUSIONS Although the large majority of unmarried men and women want to marry, less than half of respondents married across nine waves of the Japanese Life Course Panel Survey. Among those who remained unmarried, roughly two-thirds can be classified as 'drifting' into singlehood, about 30% as 'failing to realize marriage desires,' and no more than 5% as 'rejecting marriage'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Family patterns in Western countries have changed substantially across birth cohorts. The spread of unmarried cohabitation, the decline and postponement of marriage and fertility, and the rise in nonmarital births, partnership instability, and repartnering lead to an increasing diversity in family life courses. OBJECTIVE In this paper we demonstrate how to set up a tool to explore family life trajectories. This tool models the changing family patterns, taking into account the complex interrelationships between childbearing and partnership processes. METHODS We build a microsimulation model parameterised using retrospective partnership and childbearing data. The data cover women born since 1940 in Italy, Great Britain, and two Scandinavian countries (Norway and Sweden), three significantly different cultural and institutional contexts of partnering and childbearing in Europe. RESULTS We guide readers through the modelling of individual life events to obtain a set of aggregate estimates, providing information on the power, technical structure, and underlying assumptions of microsimulations. Validation of the simulated family life courses against their real-world equivalents shows that the simulations not only closely replicate observed childbearing and partnership processes, but also provide high quality predictions when compared to more recent fertility indicators. CONCLUSIONS Using observed population estimates to systematically validate the results both validates our model and increases confidence that microsimulations satisfactorily replicate the behaviour of the original population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Prior research focused on the impact of being in a partnership on quality of life from a cross-sectional perspective; the impact of partnership histories has not yet been investigated. OBJECTIVE Based on the life-course paradigm and the theory of cumulative (dis)advantages, we address this research gap. METHODS Using pairfam data, we analyse the influence of partnership histories between ages 14 and 41 on depressiveness, overall life satisfaction, and partnership expectations. We demonstrate the additional value of using life-course clusters over simple sequence characteristics by showing that more detailed and accurate conclusions can be drawn. RESULTS Results highlight that both men and women benefited from being in a stable cohabitational union.3 Gender differences were found among those who were negatively affected by not establishing a stable cohabitational union. Among men, longterm singles were significantly more depressed, less satisfied, and had more negative partnership expectations than their cohort peers. Among women, those with a history of unstable relationships were less satisfied and had more negative partnership expectations. CONCLUSIONS In line with the theory of cumulative (dis)advantages, the benefits of stable cohabitations were shown to accumulate over time for both genders. The differences found between men and women are convincing in light of research on unequal gender roles within partnerships. CONTRIBUTION We add to prior research by demonstrating the value of conducting a gender-sensitive longitudinal analysis of the impacts of partnership trajectories on quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND During the last decades, nonmarital cohabitation has diffused throughout the industrialised world, although not uniformly. The Second Demographic Transition (SDT) predicts a convergence of cohabitation patterns towards a final stage in which cohabitation and marriage will be almost indistinguishable. OBJECTIVE This paper contributes to the literature on the convergence of cohabitation patterns across countries by testing whether countries are becoming more similar over time, as suggested by the SDT. METHODS We use sequence analysis and cluster analysis techniques to classify different patterns of cohabitation in France, Italy, Norway, Bulgaria, and the United States. Using data mainly stemming from the Gender and Generations Surveys (GGS), we analyse women's patterns of behaviour during the five years following the start of their first cohabitation, over a time span of three decades (1970s-2000s). RESULTS On the basis of sequencing the events of childbirth, marriage, and separation we are able to identify five different clusters corresponding to different ways of going through the cohabitation experience. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that there is a general decreasing trend of cohabitation as a premarital experience and an increasing trend of cohabitation as an alternative to marriage or as a free union. However, within this homogeneous trend, persistent peculiarities at the country level suggest that the selected countries are not simply at different stages of the same trajectory. CONTRIBUTION The classification that emerges from the data-driven approach combines several features of already existing typologies of cohabitation experience. Analysis of the data highlights country peculiarities in the development of the cohabitation experience, rather than the existence of a common path as predicted by the SDT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND This paper studies whether new family patterns fostered inequality of educational opportunities in upper-secondary education in Italy. OBJECTIVE To analyse the association between children's educational outcomes and a wide range of family arrangements, including the time of exposure to marriage (never married, married before or after the birth). Empirical analyses also consider whether these demographic characteristics of the origin family more strongly affect children from more or less well-off families, and whether these effects change when different educational outcomes are considered. METHODS Analyses are based on the Italian Labour Force Survey (2005-2014) and apply Linear Probability Models on a sample of 123,045 children aged 15 and 16. RESULTS Children living in single-parent households or with two cohabiting biological parents have worse educational outcomes compared to children of two married biological parents. Children of highly educated parents are more penalized if access to the most prestigious academic track is considered, whereas the penalty is stronger among children of low-educated parents if the risk of not being enrolled in upper-secondary schools that give access to university is analysed. Finally, the analysis of the exposure to marriage suggests that social selectivity may drive the negative effects of cohabitation. CONTRIBUTION Results provide limited support to the argument that new family patterns increase social inequalities. Living in 'nonstandard' family arrangements does worsen children's educational outcomes, but substantial heterogeneity in their effects has been found, depending on the combination between social background and the educational outcome considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Over the last decades, the proportion of children born to unmarried mothers has been increasing in Latin America while unmarried cohabitation has become more common. One would expect the former to be a consequence of the latter and that the proportion of children born to unpartnered mothers remained stable or decreased. However, recent research has shown that the proportion of the total fertility rate (TFR) that is attributable to unpartnered women has, in fact, increased. OBJECTIVE This paper aims at understanding the increase in the share of the TFR attributable to unpartnered women in Latin America. METHODS We use census data and the own-children method to measure the evolution of fertility by conjugal union status. We use Poisson regression and a multivariate decomposition technique to examine the respective contributions of changes in the composition of the population and changes in the effects of the characteristics of the population on the changes in fertility. RESULTS In most countries the proportion of unpartnered women has increased. Their fertility has increased in some countries but decreased in others. In countries where it has decreased, it has done so at a slower pace than the fertility of partnered women, thus increasing the share of fertility that is attributable to unpartnered women. CONTRIBUTION Our study suggests that the main driver of the increasing share of fertility attributable to unpartnered women in Latin America is their increasing proportion of the population and that the increase (or slower reduction) of their fertility rates, compared to those of partnered women, is a contributing factor in some countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVE This study investigates US first cohabitation duration between young adults born in the 1950s and young adults born in the 1980s and how socioeconomic resources contribute to cohabitation duration by cohort. METHODS Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth 1979 and 1997 (NLSY79 and NLSY97), I employ life table estimates and competing-risks Cox proportional hazard models to study how cohabitation duration and transitions out of cohabitation have changed over time. RESULTS Young adult cohabitations are short-lived, regardless of cohort; however, NLSY97 cohabiting youth were slower to marry or dissolve than NLSY79 cohabitors. Socioeconomically advantaged NLSY79 youth experienced short-term cohabitation followed by marriage. In the NLSY97 cohort, results provide support for the delinking of marriage and cohabitation, regardless of socioeconomic status. CONTRIBUTION This study is the first longitudinal cohort study to explore young adult cohabitation duration in the United States. Additionally, this study empirically tests how socioeconomic resources contribute to remaining in cohabitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND With rising union instability across Europe, more individuals now re-enter the partner market and eventually repartner. The increase in cohabitation may also be influencing repartnering behaviour. While several studies examine individual-level characteristics related to repartnering, few take a broader view and compare repartnering levels or explore how demographic characteristics associated with repartnering differ across Europe. OBJECTIVE We describe levels of repartnering and the characteristics of those exposed to repartnering in 11 European countries. We then examine whether the relationship between women's demographic characteristics at union dissolution and repartnering are similar or different across countries. Given the recent increase in cohabitation, we pay particular attention to prior cohabitation and marriage, but we also compare age at first union dissolution, first union duration, and presence of children. METHODS Using the Harmonized Histories database, we apply discrete-time hazard models separately by country and to pooled cross-national data. RESULTS Despite large differences in levels of repartnering, in most countries we find similar associations between demographic characteristics and repartnering. First union type did not matter after controlling for age and children, except in France, where those who previously cohabited had significantly lower risks of repartnering. Age at union dissolution and presence of children are negatively associated with repartnering in almost all countries. CONCLUSION Although cohabitation has increased everywhere, prior experience of a coresidential partnership outside of formal marriage makes little difference to repartnering behaviour after controls (except in France). However, regardless of country, older women and/or mothers are less likely to form second unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND This special collection is the result of a collaboration between a group of family scholars from Europe and the United States. It initially developed from the observation that in many Western countries new types of couple relationships have emerged alongside marriage (i.e., cohabitation and living-apart-together [LAT] relationships). Although the trend seems universal, it is likely that the prevalence of different relationship types, and their outcomes in particular, vary across countries. Countries differ in how they institutionalize and confer meaning on new relationship types. Such differences may have important implications for how couples behave and organize their daily lives, in turn affecting the well-being of family members. The articles in this special collection aim to understand the organization and relationship outcomes of cohabitation, marriage, and LAT relationships across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Childlessness has increased in many European countries. Partnerships and parenthood are obviously closely related, but there is relatively little knowledge on how childlessness is linked to contemporary union dynamics that involve high rates of separation and unmarried cohabitation. OBJECTIVE To situate (biological) childlessness in longitudinal dynamics of union formation and stability, we take a life-course approach to union trajectories that consist of states entered via the formation and dissolution of cohabitations and marriages. Concretely, we identify groups of similar union trajectories of individuals between the ages of 18 and 39 who are childless at age 42. METHODS We analyse register data on Finnish men and women born in 1969 and 1970 (childless N=3,241) with sequence, cluster, and multinomial logistic regression methods. RESULTS Four clusters of typical union trajectories were identified among the childless and assigned these labels: 1) Never Partnered (45%), characterized by never having entered a coresidential partnership, or just having entered a cohabitation near age 40; 2) Briefly Cohabited (25%), characterized by mostly living single after a brief cohabitation spell; 3) Cohabitors, Often Serial (19%), marked by typically discontinuous cohabitation; and 4) Married (11%). The Never-Partnered cluster is male-dominated. Men with a rural background and less-educated men and women are overrepresented among the Never-Partnered childless. CONCLUSION For the great majority of the childless in our study cohorts, union trajectories are marked by either the (almost) complete absence of coresidential unions or fragmentary cohabitation histories. CONTRIBUTION The study contributes to the literature by showing that union histories, including never partnering as well as cohabitation instability, are key for understanding contemporary childlessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Since the 1960s the inclination to get married has been declining in almost all western industrialised countries. Partnership arrangements have become more diverse and the share of cohabiting couples and nonmarital births has been increasing. Yet there are substantial regional differences in marriage and childbearing patterns, and the differences between eastern and western Germany are especially striking. We assume those differences can be partially explained by social norms and different attitudes towards marriage, cohabitation, and childbearing. OBJECTIVE We explore the views and values young people in eastern and western Germany hold about marriage, cohabitation, and childbearing and how those views relate to individual life experiences. We also examine different social norms and contexts in both parts of the country. METHODS We analyse data from qualitative focus group interviews conducted in in Rostock (eastern Germany) and Lübeck (western Germany) with women and men aged 25-40. RESULTS Our findings indicate that there are normative differences between eastern and western Germans in their attitudes towards partnership, marriage, and family formation that can be traced back to the social and political conditions prior to German unification in 1990. The harmonisation of family laws and policies across Germany after 1990 did not automatically lead to a convergence in the norms and behaviours of the people living in these two regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVE These descriptive findings extend Holland's (2013) marriage typology by linking the timing of marriage, childbearing, and cohabitation, and apply it to a range of European countries and the United States. The meaning of marriage is organized around six ideal types: Direct Family-Forming, Post-Cohabitation Family-Forming, Conception-Related Legitimizing, Birth-Related Legitimizing, Reinforcing, and Capstone marriage. METHODS I present descriptive tabulations of data from the Harmonized Histories, covering 17 European countries and the United States, to highlight continuity and change in the context of marriage across the life course, cohorts, and countries. RESULTS Although smaller shares of women entered marriage at each age across cohorts, there is increasing diversity in the timing and context of marriage. Family-Forming marriage continues to be the majority marriage experience, but Direct Family-Forming marriage has declined and Post-Cohabitation Family-Forming marriage has increased in many contexts. Conception-Related Legitimizing marriages became more important in Central and Eastern Europe but less common in Western, Northern, and Anglo-Saxon countries. Limited evidence of growth in post-first-birth marriages suggests that childbearing intentions or a first conception continue to be important triggers for marriage, although this may be changing in Nordic, Anglo-Saxon, and some Western European countries. CONCLUSIONS While most people who marry do so prior to or in the absence of a first conception, increasingly marriage is not the first step in the family-building process. Still, for many women in diverse country contexts, marriage continues to be very closely linked to initiating childbearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND In several African cities the prevalence of unmarried cohabitation among youth has risen considerably. Because of its potentially negative implications for women and their children, in some countries cohabitation has even become a matter of heated public debate and policy concern. In contrast to industrialized countries, however, the choice between marriage and cohabitation in the region has attracted little attention. OBJECTIVES The purpose of the study is to explore the rising phenomenon of young, unmarried, cohabiting couples in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso, and to evaluate how characteristics of both partners involved in a dating relationship affect the choice between marriage and non-marital cohabitation when forming a first union. METHODS Based on life history data including unique relationship biographies, the study takes a competing risks approach to examine relationship transitions to a first marriage or unmarried cohabitation. RESULTS A long spell of unmarried cohabitation is common among youth in Ouagadougou today, and children's exposure to cohabitation is high. While occupation, especially male occupation, is a crucial determinant of entry into union - having a similar effect on marriage and cohabitation risks - partners' educational attainment, ethnic endogamy, and religion significantly affect the choice between marriage and cohabitation. CONCLUSIONS Ideational changes rather than economic ones motivate youth to choose cohabitation instead of marriage. Cohabitation in Ouagadougou has not become the "poor man's wedding", as Oppenheimer's hypothesis would suggest, but rather the preferred choice of dating couples who are more willing and able to distance themselves from familial expectations and marital norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Eastern Germany is a region with one of the world's highest percentages of non-marital births. Marriage and childbearing seem to be decoupled. This brings into question people's views on the institution of marriage. OBJECTIVE This paper examines eastern Germans' views on cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing. It argues that historical, social, and political contexts shape the social norms of marriage and non-marital childbearing. METHODS This paper presents data from eight qualitative focus group interviews with 74 women and men aged 25-40 in Rostock, a medium-sized city in eastern Germany. RESULTS The respondents often compared their own motives and incentives for marriage with those which existed in the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and held true for their parents. Many of them stated that having children was important for them as individuals and for their partnership. However, they treated the decision to get married and the decision to have children as two separate issues. Respondents often referred to the past and said that the strong legal and financial incentives to marry in the past regime in the socialist GDR no longer exist. Today's incentives were seen as minor, or as irrelevant to their personal situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Studies on Europe and the US indicate that marriage has been postponed, cohabitation has increased, and unions are more likely to dissolve. However, cross-national studies documenting these trends have typically studied each transition separately. OBJECTIVE This study aims to simultaneously capture these different partnership trends while examining heterogeneity within countries. Using latent class growth curves, we ask 1) what is changing more - the increase in premarital cohabitation or the increase in divorce and union dissolution? and 2) is cohabitation emerging as a relationship indistinguishable from marriage? These analyses also allow us to see whether changes over time follow a universal trajectory, and whether the US is an outlier in terms of relationship turnover. METHOD We use latent class growth models to trace the complexity of union formation in the United States and 14 countries in Europe by examining how union status can change between the ages of 15-45 for women born 1945-74. After determining the optimal number of latent classes, we calculate the probability of falling into each class by country and cohort. This shows the heterogeneity of union patterns across countries and over time. RESULTS In all countries, changes in partnership patterns have been driven by the postponement of marriage. Premarital cohabitation has changed patterns of partnership behavior more than union dissolution. Cohabitation has emerged as its own class, but is not identical to any marriage class. The US does not have disproportionately higher "relationship churning" in later cohorts compared to Eastern European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Despite the significant implications of older adults' living arrangements for their wellbeing, it is not clear whether public transfers for the elderly will increase or decrease their independent living. A few natural experiments in the U.S. show that such support increases elders' living alone owing to their preferences for privacy. There has been little quasi-experimental evidence in Asia, where multigenerational coresidence is prevalent and norms and preferences for that form of living arrangement remain strong. OBJECTIVE In 2008 the Korean government introduced the Basic Old-Age Pension (BOAP), a means-tested income support program for elders. This article examines how the program affects unmarried Korean elders' likelihood of living alone. METHODS I analyze the 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2011 waves of the Korean Retirement and Income Study, a longitudinal survey of nationally representative Koreans. The analysis takes a difference-in-difference approach, which compares changes in the living arrangements of two elderly groups, one that received BOAP benefits and the other that did not. RESULTS Overall, the program has a negative, not positive, impact on elders' living alone. A closer look reveals that the transfers helped non-coresident elders to continue living alone and prevented coresident elders from forming one-person households. CONCLUSIONS Ambivalent attitudes towards living alone in the transitional Korean society, together with the modest amount of BOAP benefits, appear to explain the mixed results. These findings are particularly relevant to other rapidly changing societies where public eldersupport systems are expanding and norms of familial elder support are weakening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND The existence of cohabitation is a historical feature of nuptiality in Latin America. Traditionally, cohabitation was common in less developed regions, among the lower social classes. But today its occurrence is increasing and in social groups and regions in which it was not common. The features of this latter type of cohabitation remain unclear. OBJECTIVE We differentiate types of cohabitation in Latin America on the basis of relationship context at its outset and its outcomes in terms of childbearing. The comparability of these types over countries is attested, as well as their evolution over time and the educational and age profiles of cohabitants. METHODS Demographic and Health Survey data for the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s for up to eight countries are analyzed by means of Multiple Group Latent Class Analysis. RESULTS Three types of cohabitation are found. The traditional type includes young and lowereducated women who start to cohabit during adolescence. They have more children at younger ages. The remaining two types of cohabitation included higher-educated women and are considered modern. The innovative type groups women from all age groups, with fewer children born at a higher age and never as a single woman. Blended cohabitation refers to older women, who could negotiate a marriage, but do not. They start to cohabit during adulthood, but always after single pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS The persistence of historical trends is attested. Traditional cohabitation is related to socioeconomic deprivation and prevails in Central American and Caribbean countries. However, two modern types of cohabitation are emerging in the region. They are concentrated in the South and related to women's independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND The diffusion of cohabitation and, presumably, of childbearing within cohabitation, inspires interest in measuring the respective contribution of childbearing within marriage and within cohabitation to overall fertility. However, there is no consensus on a proper way to do so. OBJECTIVE Contribute to the development of tools for assessing the relative importance of marriage and cohabitation to overall fertility by developing period measures closely related to agespecific fertility rates and the total fertility rate. METHODS We introduce two measures: 1) the contribution of the conjugal state (living alone, living in a cohabiting union, being married) to age-specific fertility rates (CASFR) and 2) the contribution of the conjugal state to the TFR (CTFR). These measures are similar in construction to the marital (legitimate) fertility rates and marital (legitimate) TFR, but they are weighted by the proportion of women living alone, cohabiting, or being married at each age, so that their sum is the overall TFR. Taken together, they represent the fertility of the average woman of a synthetic cohort who moves across the various conjugal states (living alone, cohabiting, being married) over her life course. They provide "realistic" estimates of completed fertility within each conjugal state. CONCLUSION CASFRs provide a description of the fertility, over her life course, of a synthetic woman who would have spent her reproductive years living alone, cohabiting, and being married as the average woman of the synthetic cohort. CTFR provides a decomposition of the cumulative fertility of this synthetic woman. Over her life course, she would have had exactly the number of children computed using the overall TFR, but CTFR details the proportion of these children she would have had while living alone, while cohabiting, and while being married. COMMENTS Despite being defined as a conditional ASR weighted by the age-specific proportion of women living alone, cohabiting, or being married, computing the CASFR does not require that one know the population distribution of women by conjugal status, as this quantity cancels out. As a consequence, CASFR and CTFR may be computed without this information, as the parity-specific ASFR may be computed without knowing the population distribution of women by parity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Dutch adults grew up in a highly individualized country, characterized by high divorce rates, which may have influenced their views on cohabitation and marriage. OBJECTIVE We examine Dutch adults' perceptions of how similar or different cohabitation and marriage are, whether they believe that cohabitation would be a strategy to avoid the risk of divorce, as well as their views on why people marry in individualized societies. METHODS We analyze seven focus group interviews with 40 Dutch participants, collected in 2012 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. RESULTS Many participants discussed differences and similarities between cohabitation and marriage in a context of high divorce rates, and frequently viewed cohabitation as a risk-reduction strategy. At the same time, marriage was often seen as "the real deal", in terms of legal arrangements, but also as a symbol of utmost commitment. Less educated participants viewed more financial advantages in cohabitation compared to marriage, and felt more strongly about the symbolic value of marriage than their highly educated counterparts. There was strong consensus that there is not, and should not be, a social norm to marry. CONCLUSIONS In a context of high relationship instability, cohabitation has become a risk-reduction strategy. When norms to marry are weak, people may marry in order to emphasize the uniqueness of their relationship. However, the individualistic nature of Dutch society is mirrored in respondents' reluctance to set standards or proscribe norms on why and when to marry and their emphasis that cohabitation can also imply high levels of commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND The increase in childbearing within cohabitation raises a question about the link between parenthood and partnership. In Norway, having the first child in cohabitation has become the most common pattern. OBJECTIVE The paper studies the interrelated meaning of partnership, marriage, and childbearing. We ask what children mean to partnerships, what the meaning of marriage is for childbearing, and what reasons there are for marrying besides childbearing. METHODS The data consist of eight focus group interviews on marriage and cohabitation. Each group had between five and nine participants aged 25 to 40 years, and was stratified by gender and education. All participants were Norwegian citizens living in Oslo. Both authors reviewed and discussed the central thematic categories relevant to the research question. RESULTS When people feel free to choose between cohabitation and marriage, the role of parenthood becomes more salient for forming a union. We find that the meaning of partnership has shifted from being defined around marriage to being defined around having a child, which makes the link between partnership and childbearing more interesting. Discussing whether to have children or a pregnancy can bring up the question of marriage and make it more relevant. The conclusion, however, is not that marriage is normative when parenthood occurs. Although the focus groups participants did not feel any pressure to have children in marriage, the general opinion was that childbearing and marriage were linked. Opinions differed, however, about the nature of such a link. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Most research asks whether or not cohabitation has come to rival marriage. Little is known about the meaning of living apart together (LAT) relationships, and whether LAT is an alternative to marriage and cohabitation or a dating relationship. OBJECTIVE We examine across Europe: (1) the prevalence of LAT, (2) the reasons for LAT, and (3) the correlates of (a) LAT relationships vis-à-vis being single, married, or cohabiting, and (b) different types of LAT union. METHODS Using Generations and Gender Survey data from ten Western and Eastern European countries, we present descriptive statistics about LATs and estimate multinominal logistic regression models to assess the correlates of being in different types of LAT unions. RESULTS LAT relationships are uncommon, but they are more common in Western than Eastern Europe. Most people in LAT unions intend to live together but are apart for practical reasons. LAT is more common among young people, those enrolled in higher education, people with liberal attitudes, highly educated people, and those who have previously cohabited or been married. Older people and divorced or widowed persons are more likely to choose LAT to maintain independence. Surprisingly, attitudinal and educational differences are more pronounced in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe. CONCLUSIONS A tentative conclusion is that LAT is more often a stage in the union formation process than an alternative to marriage and cohabitation. Yet some groups do view LAT as substituting for marriage and cohabitation, and these groups differ between East and West. In Eastern Europe a cultural, highly educated elite seems to be the first to resist traditional marriage norms and embrace LAT (and cohabitation) as alternative living arrangements, whereas this is less the case in Western Europe. In Western Europe, LAT unions are mainly an alternative for persons who have been married before or had children in a prior relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND A large body of research has compared relationship satisfaction and quality in cohabiting versus married relationships. Despite increased recognition of couples in living apart together (LAT) relationships, very little research has examined the experiences of couples in LAT relationships compared to co-residential unions. OBJECTIVE Our aim is to develop knowledge about the experiences of different union types by investigating relationship satisfaction of people in LAT, cohabiting, and marital relationships. We differentiate those with intentions to marry for cohabiters, and those with intentions to marry or live together in LAT relationships. We also examine differences by gender and country. METHODS Using data from Wave 1 of the Generations and Gender Survey in France, Germany, Australia, and Russia (n = 9,604), OLS regressions are estimated to investigate a) differences in relationship satisfaction across relationship types, and b) across countries. RESULTS Married people have the highest levels of relationship satisfaction. People in non-marital unions with intentions to marry or live together are significantly more satisfied than those without marriage or cohabitation intentions. Those in LAT relationships with no intentions to live together have the lowest levels of relationship satisfaction. There is evidence of cross-national variation with differences in relationship satisfaction by union type most pronounced in Australia and Russia. Gender differences are found with women reporting lower levels of relationship satisfaction than men. CONCLUSIONS LAT relationships are qualitatively different to co-residential unions. It is important to further develop our understanding of the experiences of couples in these relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND One of the most salient features of Latin American marriages over the last few decades is the stable timing of their union formation, despite educational expansion, the postponement of and retreat from marriage, and the increase in non-marital cohabitation. OBJECTIVE We examine why educational expansion did not influence the aggregated indicators of women's timing of union formation. METHODS We used recently harmonised international census microdata for eight Latin American countries from the 1970s to the 2000s. RESULTS The results from a logistic regression analysis show that this apparent stability was produced by contrasting shifts that occurred in various educational groups. In most countries the postponement effect that was expected from educational expansion was offset by earlier union formation (mostly through non-marital cohabitation) among the least educated (and formally largest) groups, whereas highly educated women showed no change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Remarkably little is known about the significance of consensual unions for fertility. This is true everywhere, but the lacuna is more important in the Nordic countries where there is so much childbearing outside of marriage, mostly in consensual unions. The purpose of this paper is to help fill this hole in our knowledge for Finland. DATA Unusually good register data enable us to study recent fertility trends by union status (married, cohabiting, neither) using records for some 112,000 Finnish women, or 11% of all women at fertile ages. METHODS Our description of fertility is based on group-specific duration-based TFRs, which is the number of children borne by a woman who remains in the group throughout her reproductive life, as computed from the fertility rates for a synthetic cohort. This is an intuitively appealing metric that has been taken into systematic use only recently. RESULTS We find substantial fertility differences between women who cohabit, women who marry directly (i.e., without pre-marital cohabitation), and women who marry their cohabitational partner. As one would also expect in Finland, cohabiting women have much lower fertility than married women. The marital TFR is highest among the directly-married and declines monotonically as the length of pre-marital cohabitation increases, even when premarital childbearing is included in the count. As far as we know the latter relationship has not been shown before, because extensive data for complete cohabitational unions have not been available for other populations. CONCLUSIONS The Finnish data are unique, even among the Nordic countries, in that they contain individual-level life histories of family dynamics that cover consensual unions from their very start. Fertility analysis would benefit if data similar to the Finnish were to become available, because analyses that rely on civil status as an indicator of union status barely add anything to what we already know about today"s family dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various data have constantly pointed out a low incidence of non-marital unions in Poland (at 1.4-4.9% among all unions). In this paper we demonstrate that these data, coming exclusively from cross-sectional surveys, clearly underestimate the scale of the phenomenon. By exploiting data on partnership histories we show that young Poles have increasingly opted for cohabitation. Consequently, in the years 2004-2006, entries to cohabitation constituted about one third of all first union entries. Consensual unions have traditionally been seen as being more widespread among the lower social strata, but a clear increase in cohabitation has also been recently observed among groups with higher levels of educational attainment. Although the estimates of cohabitation incidence are far below those observed in Northern and Western Europe, our study suggests that Poland is not as 'immune' to the spread of consensual unions as it is commonly believed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use two surveys to describe the demographic and attitudinal correlates of being in "Living Apart Together" (LAT), cohabiting, and marital relationships for heterosexuals, lesbians, and gay men. About one third of U.S. adults not married or cohabiting are in LAT relationships - these individuals would be classified as "single" in conventional studies that focus on co-residential unions. Gay men are somewhat more likely than heterosexual men to be in LAT relationships. For heterosexuals and lesbians, LAT relationships are more common among younger people. Heterosexuals in LAT unions are less likely to expect to marry their partners, but more likely to say that couples should be emotionally dependent than are cohabiters. Regardless of sexual orientation, people in LAT relationships perceive similar amounts of emotional support from partners, but less instrumental support than cohabiters perceive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes marriage and partnership patterns and trends in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa from 2000-2006. The study is based on longitudinal, population-based data collected by the Africa Centre demographic surveillance system. We consider whether the high rates of non-marriage among Africans in South Africa reported in the 1980s were reversed following the political transformation underway by the 1990s. Our findings show that marriage has continued to decline with a small increase in cohabitation among unmarried couples, particularly in more urbanised areas. Comparing surveillance and census data, we highlight problems with the use of the 'living together' marital status category in a highly mobile population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the era of the 'golden age of marriage' and the baby boom in the 1950s and 1960s, marriage has declined in importance, and its role as the main institution on which family relations are built has been eroded across Europe. Union formation most often takes place without a marriage. Family and living arrangements are currently heterogeneous across Europe, but all countries seem to be making the same shifts: towards fewer people living together as a couple, especially in marriage; an increased number of unmarried couples; more children born outside marriage; and fewer children living with their two parents. The relationship between these changing living arrangements, especially the decline of marriage, on the one hand, and the overall level of fertility, on the other, is not straightforward. In most countries, marriage rates and fertility declined simultaneously. However, the aggregate relationship between marriage and fertility indices has moved from negative (fewer marriages imply fewer births) to positive (fewer marriages imply more births). Thus, the decline of marriage, which is a part of the second demographic transition (see Overview Chapter 6), cannot be considered an important cause of the current low fertility level in many European countries. On the contrary, in European countries where the decline of marriage has been less pronounced, fertility levels are currently lower than in countries where new living arrangements have become most common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the demographic changes that affect all European countries, the diffusion of new living arrangements such as non-marital cohabitation is particularly interesting. In this article we concentrate on Italy, a country that is characterized by a low pace in the diffusion of cohabitation. Earlier studies found statistical evidence of the impact of parents' characteristics on young adults' decisions for cohabitation. However, there is only limited empirical knowledge about the actual mechanism through which parents influence the choices of their children. We employ qualitative research methods and focus on two regional contexts in order to analyze if and how parents intervene in the choices of young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the 1995 and 2002 waves of the National Survey of Family Growth to examine recent trends in cohabitation in the United States. We find increases in both the prevalence and duration of unmarried cohabitation. Cohabitation continues to transform children's family lives, as children are increasingly born to cohabiting mothers (18% during 1997-2001) or later experience their mother's entry into a cohabiting union. Consequently, we estimate that two-fifths of all children spend some time in a cohabiting family by age 12. Because of substantial missing data in the 2002 NSFG, we are unable to produce new estimates of divorce or of children's time in single-parent families. Nonetheless, our results point to the steady growth of cohabitation and to the evolving role of cohabitation in U.S. family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic and sociological theories of marriage have long emphasized the impact of women's education and employment on union formation. In this study, we explore the relevance of the female economic independence hypothesis to explain women's patterns of entry into marriage and cohabitation in Portugal and Spain. In these two Southern European countries, gender equity has improved remarkably in the public sphere, but family relations remain structured along traditional gender roles. We focus on three indicators of women's autonomy: educational attainment, employment status, and having lived independently from the family of origin. The analysis is based on the Fertility and Family Surveys and discrete-time multinomial logistic regression models are used to estimate the odds of marrying, cohabiting or remaining single. The results suggest that whereas the effect of female education is consistent with the independence hypothesis, women's labour force participation encourages union formation, particularly among younger cohorts. Living independently from the family of origin reduces the likelihood of entering into marriage but increases considerably the odds of cohabiting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1989, the socialist regime in Romania collapsed and the state's coercive pro-natalist policy ended. Since then, fertility has gone through major changes, namely, a massive reduction in fertility and important structural changes: birth postponement, an end to universal childbearing, and the emergence of non-marital births. Family formation has been postponed, but a pattern of early marriage still persists compared to other European countries. Although unmarried cohabitation is rising, it is rarely seen as an alternative to marriage. Modern contraceptive methods are being used increasingly, but traditional contraceptive methods continue to be widespread. Abortion, which was relegalized in 1989 and made available after two decades of prohibition, has been practiced extensively ever since, especially after first birth. Romanians in 2004 continue to have a universal preference for parenting. However, the preference for the two-child family has declined and the desire for a larger family has become the exception. The transformation of the socialist regime into a democratic society with a market economy generated a socio-economic crisis, and the majority of social benefits have therefore been oriented towards alleviating poverty. Other social policies, including those affecting the family, were redefined. However, fewer funds were made available than for those geared to promote economic development or reduce poverty and, as a consequence, their impact on childbearing has been small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly two-thirds of Spanish women aged 20-34 have not yet entered their first union. However, almost half of them have a stable partner living in a different household. Hence, the drop in marriage rates and low prevalence of cohabitation cannot be rightly interpreted as a decline in partnership formation, but rather as a postponement of coresidential unions. This article examines the prevalence and determinants of nonresidential stable partnerships among women aged 20-34, in relation to cohabitation and marriage, using a multinomial logit model of current partnership type. The analysis is based on data from the 1999 Spanish Fertility Survey. We find that women's high educational attainment and their partner's work instability deter co-residential partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]