Volume 40 - Article 42 | Pages 1211–1248  

The changing pattern of cohabitation: A sequence analysis approach

By Paola Di Giulio, Roberto Impicciatore, Maria Sironi

Abstract

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 pre-marital 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.

Author's Affiliation

• Paola Di Giulio - Vienna Institute of Demography (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Austria EMAIL
• Roberto Impicciatore - Università di Bologna (UNIBO), Italy EMAIL
• Maria Sironi - University College London (UCL), United Kingdom EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Do couples who use fertility treatments divorce more? Evidence from the US National Survey of Family Growth
Volume 49 - Article 23

Simulating family life courses: An application for Italy, Great Britain, Norway, and Sweden
Volume 44 - Article 1

Living arrangements of adult children of immigrants in selected European countries
Volume 43 - Article 30

Ageing dynamics of a human-capital-specific population: A demographic perspective
Volume 31 - Article 44

MAPLES: A general method for the estimation of age profiles from standard demographic surveys (with an application to fertility)
Volume 24 - Article 29

Intergenerational family ties and the diffusion of cohabitation in Italy
Volume 16 - Article 14

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Age-heterogamous partnerships: Prevalence and partner differences by marital status and gender composition
Volume 50 - Article 23    | Keywords: age heterogamy, assortative mating, cohabitation, marriage, same-sex couples, unions

Measuring the educational gradient of period fertility in 28 European countries: A new approach based on parity-specific fertility estimates
Volume 49 - Article 34    | Keywords: education, Europe, period fertility, quantum, tempo, total fertility rate (TFR)

Calculating contraceptive prevalence and unmet need for family planning in low-fertility countries with the Generations and Gender Survey
Volume 49 - Article 21    | Keywords: cross-national study, Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Europe, family planning, Fertility and Family Survey (FFS), Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), longitudinal data, panel data, unplanned births, World Fertility Survey

An alternative version of the second demographic transition? Changing pathways to first marriage in Japan
Volume 49 - Article 16    | Keywords: cohabitation, first marriages, pattern of disadvantage, premarital children, second demographic transition, transition

Adult children’s union type and contact with mothers: A replication
Volume 48 - Article 23    | Keywords: cohabitation, intergenerational contacts, marriage