Recent Marriage Cohorts Research Articles

Stability and change in predictors of marital dissolution in the US 1950–2017

AbstractObjectiveOur goal is to measure change over time in the predictors of marital dissolution in the United States.BackgroundThe last comprehensive comparative analysis of predictors of marital dissolution is more than 20 years out of date. Rising inequality in the United States requires a fresh look at the predictors of marital dissolution. The Diverging Destinies hypothesis predicts greater inequality over time in the divorce rate between groups, whereas the Converging Destinies hypothesis predicts convergence in divorce rates.MethodWe use a variety of event history models to examine the change over time in race, ethnicity, intermarriage, premarital cohabitation, education, teen marriages, and family of origin intactness as predictors of marital dissolution using data on first marriages from the National Survey of Family Growth covering seven decades of marital histories. We examine racial differences in the nonracial predictors of divorce.ResultsIn the post‐Civil Rights era, Black women's and White women's marital dissolution rates converged. In the most recent marriage cohorts, marital dissolution rates for Black women have increased relative to White women and teen marriage is increasingly associated with divorce. Women without the BA degree appear to be increasingly at risk for divorce. We find that wives from racial minority groups have divorce rates that are less impacted by premarital cohabitation, low education, and teen marriage.ConclusionThe demographic profile of women at marriage has changed dramatically, while the predictors of divorce have changed modestly. Where there are changes in the predictors of divorce, we find more support for Diverging Destinies.

Contemporary Marriage in Cambodia.

Previous work has suggested that the drastic Khmer-Rouge-era changes to the family institution have not endured. Potentially more influential in the long term were the rapid socio-economic changes Cambodia underwent starting in the 1990s. We use four waves of the Cambodian Demographic and Health Surveys from 2000 to 2014 to document contemporary trends in marriage formation and dissolution. We find little change in the centrality of marriage, as both cohabitation and sex between unmarried partners remain quite rare. Marriage also continues to be nearly universal and early for women, but we find that the transition to self-arranged "love" marriages occurred earlier and faster than previously documented. A sign that parental endorsement may still matter though, marriage dissolution continues to be associated with spousal characteristics deemed undesirable by past generations. While higher among recent marriage cohorts, especially in the first year after marriage, levels of marriage dissolution remain comparatively low overall.

Internet as a Meeting Place for Spouses: Homogamy, Assortative Mating and Online Dating in Contemporary Italy

This article studies the places where spouses met for the first time in Italy. The focus is on online settings in the most recent marriage cohorts (2000-2009 and 2010-2016). The aim is to investigate trends over time in the use of the Internet as a meeting place and to explore whether Internet dating can affect the rules of assortative mating and homogamy. Information about first marriages is analyzed to focus on highly engaged relationships. A quantitative approach is used and bivariate and multivariate analyses are conducted. The data used for the analyses come from the national representative survey "Family, social subjects and life cycle" carried out by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) in 2016 and made available in 2020. The results allow a preliminary quantification of the phenomenon and document an increase in online dating in Italy (from 0.4 percent of spouses who first met online in the marriage cohort 2000-2009 to 2.5 percent in the cohort 2010-2016). The data support the idea that online contexts show homogamy paths not different from those that characterize offline dating venues. Meeting an online partner doesn’t seem to imply heterogamy.

Internet as a Meeting Place for Spouses: Online Dating, Homogamy and Assortative Mating in Contemporary Italy

In this article places where spouses first met in Italy are studied. The focus is on online settings in the most recent marriage cohorts (2000-2016). The aim is to investigate trends over time of using the Internet as a meeting place and to explore whether Internet dating can affect assortative mating and homogamy rules. Information on first marriages is analysed to study highly committed and long-lasting relationships between partners. Data used for the analyses come from the nationally representative survey "Family, Social Subjects and Life Cycle" carried out by the Italian National Statistical Institute (Istat) in 2016 on a sample of about 32,000 individuals made available in 2020. The results allow a preliminary quantification of the phenomenon and document an increase in meetings occurring online in Italy (from 0.4 per cent in the marriage cohort 2000-2009 to 2.5 per cent in the marriage cohort 2010-2016). Furthermore, data support the idea that online contexts show homogamy paths not different from those that characterize offline dating venues. Meeting a partner online does not seem to imply heterogamy.

Slábne v ČR mezigenerační přenos rozvodu?

This study investigates changes in the effect of parental divorce on the odds of union dissolution in children in the Czech Republic. Using survival analysis and Czech GGS data, it shows that the intergeneration transmission of divorce varied over marital cohorts to a significant degree. While parental divorce had insignificant effect in the oldest marriage cohort, it subsequently grew. In the 1980–1989 marriage cohort, the risk of divorce was 3.7 times higher among children of divorced parents than among children whose parents did not divorce. In the most recent marriage cohort (1990–2005), the parental divorce effect weakened but was still significant: children of divorced parents experienced a divorce risk that was twice as high that of children from intact families. This convergence of divorce risks resulted from two parallel trends: the rising divorce risk among children from non-divorced families and the declining divorce risk among children of divorce.

Cohabitation and Marital Dissolution: A Comment on Rosenfeld and Roesler (2019)

AbstractObjectiveOur goal is to comment on a recently published paper (Rosenfeld & Roesler, 2019. Journal of Marriage and Family, 81, 42‐58) and provide an alternative analysis of the association between premarital cohabitation and marital instability.BackgroundTheir findings run counter to recently published papers on this topic. Although their article offers a potential explanation for this finding, the models include multiple and potentially confounding measures of time creating questions about their conclusions.MethodOur comment is based on approaches used in prior studies of cohabitation and marital instability using the same data source. Reviews of measures of time and data limitations are included along with new event history analyses focusing on marriage cohorts.ResultsTheir models arguably include too many indicators of time. Unlike the study by Rosenfeld and Roesler (2019) and consistent with other recent studies, we find that cohabitation has a weaker association with dissolution among recently married couples and cohabitation with a spouse prior to marriage is not associated with marital instability for recent marriage cohorts. This finding holds even when accounting for variation by marital duration.ConclusionThis comment provides insights into the use of the National Survey of Family Growth data ( https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/index.htm data) and measurement of time. Our results provide evidence that counters the conclusion by Rosenfeld and Roesler (2019) that scholars have been “misled” about the role of cohabitation and marital dissolution.

Partner Type Attitudes of Parents and Adolescents: Understanding the Decline in Transnational Partnerships among Turkish Migrants in Flanders

This article describes an unprecedented decline in transnational partnerships among Turkish migrants in Flanders, using population data on all marriages between 2001 and 2008. Studying parental preferences regarding partner selection, we examine attitudinal mechanisms behind this decline. Based on a representative survey, our first result is that (direct) parental involvement in partner selection is lower among the more recent marriage cohorts. Second, parents and adolescents have moved away from a focus on the origin country in partner selection, while ethnic homogamy remains preferred. Third, openness toward mixed partnerships is found among a small but salient proportion of parents and associated with the religious attendance of male parents. We conclude that an attitudinal shift has occurred from a focus on the origin country to an orientation toward the local (ethnic) community. This decline in transnational partnerships is more a product of intense attitudinal change than a reflection of a policy change in the direction of discouraging partner migration and has implications for the integration and demographic characteristics of Turkish ethnic minorities in Flemish society. Additionally, international migration patterns are affected as the character of long-lasting migration from Turkey to Europe is changing and partner migration, one of the most accessible channels to enter Europe, is rapidly decreasing.

Bridal pregnancy and women’s educational attainment in South Korea, 1970–2009

We examine the link between marriage and fertility in South Korea by focusing on the historic trend of bridal pregnancy (marriage preceded by pregnancy) over the four decadal marriage cohorts since the 1970s. We first demonstrate how the rate of bridal pregnancy changes over the observed period and then investigate the educational differentials in the trend. These inquiries are examined by analyzing a sample of 29,213 ever-married Korean women from recently pooled data from the National Survey of Fertility and Family Health (NSFFH). The results show that bridal pregnancy has increased from 16% in the 1970s marriage cohort to 20% in the 2000s marriage cohort. In response to class differentials, while bridal pregnancy has been more prevalent among less-educated women than among their counterparts, bridal pregnancy has increased across all education groups over time. In addition, the magnitudes of increase are more noticeable among highly educated women of recent marriage cohorts. We contextualize our findings and provide speculations about subsequent family changes in South Korea.

Resistant to change? The transition to parenthood among married adults in China

Using retrospective life history data from the 2008 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) and discrete time event history analysis, this study investigates the transition to parenthood of adult males and females for the 1965 to 2004 marriage cohorts. We find that Chinese people generally prefer to become parents soon after marriage. We also find that more recent marriage cohorts are less likely to become parents compared to earlier cohort for males, but this is not the case for women. This indicates that economic or role incompatibility in general does not prevent women from becoming mothers, which in general supports the idea that there are alternative resources available for women to balance the role incompatibility in China's context. The extended family is an important resource for married couples to rely upon to raise young children. This study sheds light on China's family therapy practice, which should take into consideration the demographic trends and cultural factors in understanding the role conflict within the family, such as intergenerational relations and gender ideology.Practitioner points Role incompatibility of having children can be relieved by extended family, so therapy programmes dealing with intergenerational relationship should be developed Family therapists should consider the pace of gender ideology change in child rearing during negotiation of the husband‐wife relationship Training programmes can be more specific to the extended family for dealing with child rearing skills and potential conflict resolutions.

Hukou Intermarriage in China: Patterns and Trends

:Most studies on intermarriage between groups rely on the prevalence of intermarriage to assess social boundaries. Yet the characteristics underlying the intermarriage pairings are seldom examined. In this study, I analyze intermarriage across hukou, China’s household registration status of designating people as “rural” or “urban” categories based on parents’ place of origin. Using Chinese General Social Surveys, I show that the intermarriage pairings do not follow the patterns of endogamous marriage across three marriage cohorts. Rather, intermarriages build on group inequalities based on hukou in which urban hukou holders are able to marry more educated rural spouses because of their urban status advantage even after controlling for the general likelihood of intermarriage, educational homogamy, and marginal differences in education between rural and urban hukou holders. However, such a status exchange relationship has weakened in the recent marriage cohort, implying a gradual blurring of hukou boundaries.

The Reversal of the Gender Gap in Education and Trends in Marital Dissolution.

The reversal of the gender gap in education has potentially far-reaching consequences for marriage markets, family formation, and relationship outcomes. One possible consequence of this is the growing number of marriages in which wives have more education than their husbands. Previous studies have found this type of union to be at higher risk of dissolution. Using data on marriages formed between 1950 and 2004 in the United States, we evaluate whether this association has persisted as the prevalence of this relationship type has increased. Our results show a large shift in the association between spouses' relative education and marital dissolution. In particular, we confirm that marriages in which wives have the educational advantage were once more likely to dissolve, but we show that this association has disappeared in more recent marriage cohorts. Another key finding is that the relative stability of marriages between educational equals has increased. These results are consistent with a shift away from rigid gender specialization toward more flexible, egalitarian partnerships and provide an important counterpoint to claims that progress toward gender equality in heterosexual relationships has stalled.

THE PRACTICE OF CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGE IN OMAN: PREVALENCE, TRENDS AND DETERMINANTS

The practice of consanguineous marriage has been the culturally preferred form of marriage in most Arab and the Middle Eastern countries, including Oman, but due to a paucity of population-based data in the past there is a dearth of information about its form and dynamics in Oman. Recent national-level surveys allow this gap to be filled. This paper examines the prevalence, trends and determinants of consanguineous marriages in Oman using data from the 2000 Oman National Health Survey. The results indicate a very high prevalence of consanguineous marriage in Oman, as more than half (52%) of marriages are consanguineous. First cousin unions are the most common type of consanguineous unions, constituting 39% of all marriages and 75% of all consanguineous marriages. The study observed various patterns of consanguinity, some of them common with other Arab nations, and some unique in nature. Women's age at marriage, employment, place of childhood residence and geographical region appear to be significant determinants of consanguineous marriages. Consanguineous marriage shows a strong association with marital stability, early age at marriage and early-age childbearing. There has been no appreciable change in the prevalence of consanguineous unions in Oman over the last four decades despite massive socioeconomic development and modernization. However, recent marriage cohorts show slight declining trends. The results suggest that consanguinity is likely to remain stable in the future or decline at a slow rate. Specific health education and genetic counselling should be followed in line with WHO recommendations to minimize the negative health consequences of consanguinity for child health.

The Gender Division of Household Labor in Vietnam: Cohort Trends and Regional Variations

This study addresses the extent of change and region al differences in gender roles in the Vietnamese family based on innovative surveys in northern and southern Vietnam. The similarities and differences in political, economic, and social histories between northern and southern Vietnam provide a compelling setting to investigate the impact of socialist policies and the recent shift from a centrally planned to a market economy on gender stratification in the domestic spheres. We assess determinants of the gender division of household labor among three marriage cohorts that underwent early marital years during 1) the Vietnam War and mass mobilization, 2) nationwide socialist collectivization and economic stagnation, and 3) market reform. We find that Vietnamese wives still do the vast majority of housework. In this sense, government efforts to change gender roles apparently have had at most limited success. Vietnamese husbands in the most recent marriage cohort, however, are more involved in household budget management and childcare than those in the two earlier cohorts. Thus, contrary to claims of some observers, evidence does not suggest that gender equality in the Vietnamese household has been deteriorating after the market reform.

National estimates of the rise in serial cohabitation

This paper provides new estimates of changing patterns of serial cohabitation, using data from the 1995 and 2002 National Survey of Family Growth. Serial cohabitation is defined as having multiple premarital cohabiting relationships. Analyses indicate that rates of serial cohabitation increased by nearly 40 percent over the late 1990s and early 2000s, and rates were especially high among young adults and recent marriage cohorts. A large majority of women – 75 percent – nevertheless lived only with men they eventually married. Although rates of serial cohabitation are higher among never-married women than ever-married women, there is little indication that single women – even older single women – have embraced serial cohabitation as an alternative to marriage or even as an intensive kind of dating. The results show that serial cohabitation is heavily concentrated among disadvantaged populations (e.g., women who grew up in single parent families). Early sexual activity and teen childbearing are especially important “risk” factors for serial cohabitation in the never-married population. There is little evidence, however, that recent shifts in the sociodemographic risk profile of the US population have been responsible for observed increases in single-instance or serial cohabitation. Increases in serial cohabitation have been broadly experienced across population groups in America.

Husbands' and Wives' Education and Divorce in the United States and Japan, 1946-2000

How the relationship between status and divorce shifts over historical time among industrialized countries remains largely unknown. A socioeconomic growth hypothesis posits that a more recent marriage cohort (relative to a previous cohort) in an industrialized country exhibits (1) larger divorce-suppressive effects of husbands' and wives' higher level of education and (2) a shift from a pattern in which only husbands' education substantially influences the couples' likelihood of divorce to a pattern in which both spouses' education influences that likelihood. The author tests the need to modify this hypothesis to reflect the intervening influences of cultural-institutional arrangements using the United States and Japan. The author applies event history regressions to the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Japanese General Social Survey. Results from both countries suggest the needs for modifications and imply that divorce is increasingly tied to socioeconomic inequality in both industrialized countries, but in contrasting ways.

Characteristics of Women in Consanguineous Marriages in Egypt, 1988–2000

This article reviews three mechanisms related to autonomy, wealth, and local cultural factors, which are said to underly the high prevalence of consanguineous marriage in Arab societies. It then assesses each of them empirically in two stages. The first uses a pooled dataset constituted by the most recent marriage cohorts in the 1992 and 2000 waves of the Egyptian Demographic and Health Surveys. Three results stand out. The frequency of consanguinity in the most recent marriage cohorts (i) is strongly correlated with the frequency among older cohorts, signaling the strong clustering of underlying institutional (and unobserved) supports; (ii) tends to be more common among women who are poorer in absolute term, though wealthier than average in their communities; and (iii) varies temporally and across the rural–urban divide in its relationship to women’s autonomy. A subsidiary analysis, using only the 2000 data, then identifies wealth and autonomy differences between first cousin patrilateral and matrilateral wives.

Have Changes in Gender Relations Affected Marital Quality?

We used national data from two samples reflecting different marriage cohorts to examine long-term changes in gender relations within marriage, long-term changes in marital quality, and the association between the two. The first marriage cohort consisted of individuals married between 1964 and 1980 (N = 1,119) and interviewed in 1980, whereas the second marriage cohort consisted of individuals married between 1981 and 1997 (N = 312) and interviewed in 1997. Compared with the earlier cohort, the more recent cohort reported larger contributions to household income among wives, more employment of wives with preschool-age children, less traditional gender-role attitudes, a greater share of housework on the part of husbands, less husband influence in marriage, and greater wife influence in marriage. Members of the more recent marriage cohort also reported significantly more marital discord. This difference in discord was explained partly by greater work-family conflict in the more recent cohort. Other changes in gender relations, however, were not related to increases in marital discord

Age at Marriage and the First Birth Interval: The Emerging Change in Sexual Behavior Among Young Couples in China

The authors argue that marriage was affected by government policy in China and that the shortened first birth interval was not simply compensating behavior for later marriage. The shorter birth interval is also attributed to broad social changes. First births are identified as births resulting from a conception before marriage and after marriage. Data are obtained among a 10% subsample (34278 ever married women aged 15-57 years and married during 1965-1988) of the 1988 Two per Thousand Survey. By the mid-1980s in China premarital conceptions had increased to 5 per 100 pregnancies from about 1 per 100 pregnancies in the 1950s. Timing shifted closer to the marriage date. Since the 1950s marriage to first birth interval declined by about 1.5 years. During the 1970s age at first marriage increased. The probability of having a birth increased from <0.05 at the 8th month of marriage to 0.17 at the 10th month for the 1965-69 cohort and to 0.29 for the 1985-88 cohort. Findings from the analysis of the determinants of premarital conception reveal that marriage cohort completely accounted for the incidence of premarital conceptions. The most recent marriage cohort was 3.6 times more likely than the 1965-69 cohort to have premarital conceptions. Urban women were twice as likely as rural women to have premarital conceptions. Women with a primary or higher education were twice as likely as illiterate or semi-literate women to have premarital conceptions. Later marriage age was associated with fewer premarital conceptions. Higher social status was associated with a greater probability of premarital conceptions. Women who married late and women in more recent cohorts and with higher educational attainment had shorter birth intervals. The social changes in China that affected sex behavior included a shift away from arranged marriages a rapid increase in formal education and employment changed norms about sexuality and knowledge of sexuality promoted in family planning programs. The Chinese socialist state was the vehicle for the broad social changes and not simply modernization.

Delayed childbearing in contemporary Spain: trends and differentials.

Data from the 1985 Spanish Survey of Fertility including 8789 women aged 18-49 years is used to examine the timing of 1st births from marriage. Premarital births are excluded. Life table estimates are used to describe trends and differentials. A piecewise constant hazard model, which assumes a constant transition rate within each duration segment (0-7, 8-12, 13-18, 19-24, 25-36, and 37-48 months), and discrete-time hazard models are used in the analysis. Analysis is devoted to the trends in the timing of 1st birth, differentials in the timing of transition to 1st birth as affected by age at marriage, education, labor force participation before marriage, religiosity, number of siblings, place of residence, and region. Fertility has declined from 2.7 in 1975 to 1.3 in 1990 while the country adapted to a democratic political process, legalization of contraceptives, and relaxation of gender roles. There was rapid family formation during the 1960s and 1970s. Recent marriage cohorts have been delaying the birth of a 1st child and birth control has increased. Premarital conceptions have increased. Differentials in timing of 1st birth did not affect fertility because delayers still had children. Postponement of childbearing is new to Spain and may reflect unstable economic conditions or security of women's position in the labor market. Cultural norms have also changed to define an appropriate time for childbearing as not immediately after marriage. Life table estimates show the median age of women at 1st birth as 25.6 years in the early 1980s compared to 24.6 years in the later 1970s. The interquartile timing of 1st births ranged from 14 months for the 1970-74 birth cohort to 26 months for the 1980-83 cohort. Women who married in the 1960s and early 1970s had their 1st child within the 1st year of marriage. Observations are that motherhood remains unchanged, timing reflects intercohort differences, postponement occurs after 1975, and differentials are not constant across marriage duration. Marriage cohort composition has changed to women with higher education, lower religiosity, smaller families of origin, and increasing labor participation before marriage, which shows in the life table estimates to postponement. The rate differentials between 1965-69 and 1970-74 cohorts are statistically significant in the multivariate model.

Immigration, social change and cohort fertility in Israel

14000 Israeli women were interviewed between 1973-1975 in a series of surveys designed to identify cohort fertility trends of specific immigrant subpopulations in Israel and their socioeconomic correlates. The complexity of fertility changes was found to be masked when fertility of the total Jewish population was examined; thus ethnic breakdowns were utilized. Initial completed fertility of European immigrants regardless of period of migration was 2-2.5 children/married woman but showed a general increase and convergence among more recent marriage cohorts. Initial fertility for migrants from Asia and North Africa was 6.5-7 and 7.5 respectively but in both cases this initially high rate was cut in half between marriage cohorts 25-30 years apart as fertility began to respond to the more modernized conditions in Israeli society. Israeli-born of Afro-Asian origin have lower fertility levels than immigrants from these countries; conversely Israeli-born of European descent show higher levels than European immigrants. Overall an intergenerational fertility convergence between ethnic groups is complemented by a convergence within immigrant subpopulations indicative of a rapid fertility response appropriate to societal changes. In addition all ethnic groups show recent fertility increases among younger cohorts. This is interpreted as an insurance effect due to the high rate of war casualties.