Home and Where the Heart Is: Marriage Timing and Joint Home Purchase

Abstract

This article evaluates the relationship between the timing of marriage and the purchase of a jointly owned home among Swedish cohabiting couples. Data for this analysis come from the Swedish Housing and Life Course Cohort Study (N = 1,596 couples; 2,006 cohabiting spells). The author develops models to proxy for simultaneity and intentions and test hypotheses about positive and negative and long- and short-run relationships between the two life-course events. The author uses a novel modeling approach, allowing for differences in the risk before, concurrently and after the conditioning event. Results indicate a positive relationship between marriage and joint home purchase and suggest the possibility of an ordering of events: For some couples, formalizing their union through marriage may be a prerequisite for a joint home purchase.