Abstract

AbstractThis chapter provides an overview of the conceptual and empirical challenges that arise once measuring union stability. Conceptually, the chapter discusses different ways of defining unions and what each way implies in terms of measurement. For the purposes of this chapter, union stability is defined as the stability of both marriages and co-residential unions. Available data sources are discussed as well as their possible biases. Empirically, the chapter compares two data sources from Britain to show that there are serious challenges to be overcome when using survey data to estimate trends in union stability. Survey data possibly overestimates union stability due to selective non-response and prospective surveys do not report many unions that existed according to retrospective data. Good news comes from a comparison of two retrospective sources which provide relatively consistent estimates of trends in union stability. If retrospective information is indeed to be trusted, union stability has been decreasing across cohorts (1974–1999), but this development appears to have stalled for the most recent cohort formed in 2000–2004. A lack of recent data, however, prevents us from knowing whether this trend has continued, underlining the need to invest in the repeated collection of retrospective union histories.

Highlights

  • The dramatic increases in divorce rates in Western societies over the last decades have provided a fertile ground for theories regarding individual and couple behavior (Wagner et al 2015)

  • The results show that it is the period covered by prospective data where union stability is higher in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)

  • There are good reasons to doubt the validity of conclusions based on the prospective source of data: comparisons of retrospective and prospective data showed that a non-negligible number of dissolution events are “missing” from prospective reports and attrition appears directly related to separation events

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Summary

Introduction

The dramatic increases in divorce rates in Western societies over the last decades have provided a fertile ground for theories regarding individual and couple behavior (Wagner et al 2015). The increased prevalence of divorce has been regarded as an indication of a greater value put on personal autonomy (Lesthaeghe 1995) and changing expectations of relationships (Cherlin 2004). It has been regarded as reflecting changes in relationship dynamics between men and women, with women having increasingly more control over their own lives and couple behavior (Becker et al 1977; Oppenheimer 1997). The recent possible stabilization of marriage has not yet sparked great interest from scholars. This could well be because the selection of people into marriage has changed over time. The aim of this chapter is to try and answer this question for cohabiting unions and marriages in Britain. To get insight into how serious these biases are, several tests will be performed

The Conceptual Switch from Marital to Union Stability
Estimating Trends in Union Stability
Administrative Data
Survey Data
This Study
Data and Method
Comparing Retrospective and Prospective Reports Using a Consistent Sample
Re-call Bias
Attrition
Comparing Retrospective and Prospective Reports of Trends in Union Stability
Discussion
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