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The family context in which babies are born is of continuing interest to policy makers. This article begins by reviewing trends in births within and outside marriage in England and Wales in the last two decades. It then examines the driving factors behind the ongoing rise in the proportion of births outside marriage, with particular focus on the proportion of married women of childbearing age, and changes in marital and non-marital fertility rates. Given the variety of modern living arrangements into which children are born, the emphasis of the article then shifts to non-marital births within cohabiting partnerships. For the first time estimates of fertility for cohabiting women of different ages are presented. These are based on information collected at birth registration and survey estimates of the cohabiting population. Fertility rates for cohabiting women are then compared with those of married women and other (non-married, non-cohabiting) women. Although there are limitations to the methodology, the article shows that over the past two decades, cohabiting women in England and Wales have had an overall level of fertility below that of married women but considerably above that of other unmarried women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stability of couple partnerships is of continual interest to policy makers and many users of official statistics. This research used a sample of adults (from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study) who were in a partnership (married or cohabiting) in the 1991 Census of England and Wales, and then explored whether these individuals were living with the same partner in 2001. Marital partnerships were found to be more stable, even when additional factors were taken into account. Of adults aged 16 to 54, around four in five adults (82 per cent) that were married in 1991 were living with the same partner in 2001. The equivalent figure for adults cohabiting in 1991 was around three in five (61 per cent), of whom around two-thirds (of those remaining with the same partner) had converted their cohabitation to a marriage by 2001. Long-running partnership stability was also found to vary according to the socio-demographic characteristics of individuals and their partners and a summary of these variations is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarises mid-2007 cohabitation estimates produced for England and Wales and compares these with estimates made for previous years. Over the last fifteen years there has been a rise in the number of cohabiting adults in England and Wales. Previous estimates indicate that there were 2.7 million cohabiting adults in 1992 (6 per cent of the population over 16-years-old). In 2007 it is estimated that the number of cohabiting adults had increased to 4.5 million (10 per cent of the population over 16-years-old). Cohabitation trends provide evidence to suggest that cohabitation will continue to rise for never married adults (and therefore overall), particularly at older ages. There is also evidence suggesting an end to historic increases in cohabitation levels for never married adults under 30-years-old. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]