IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ran/wpaper/wr-1001.html

Cohabitation and Marriage Intensity Consolidation, Intimacy, and Commitment

Author

Listed:
  • Michael S. Pollard
  • Kathleen Mullan Harris

Abstract

In this paper the authors report on cohabitation and marriage data coming from the third wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, or Add Health, a national longitudinal study of adolescents and young adults beginning in 1995 that has been funded by NICHD and 17 other federal agencies. Add Health respondents were aged 18-26 in Wave III (2001-02) when romantic relationships are particularly salient in young people's lives and tend to become more serious and intimate as they take on adult roles and responsibilities. Add Health employed several innovative methods to measure cohabitation and to better understand the relationship dynamics of cohabiting unions in ways that are similar to marital unions. They present two different ways to measure cohabiting unions according to the length of time a couple has "lived together" and the implications of different definitions for the levels of cohabitation in the Add Health sample. They also develop measures that capture domains of relationship functioning, quality, and intimacy and contrast these aspects of relationships by cohabitation and marital status and by the duration of the relationship. Finally, they are able to contrast cohabiting relationships with married relationships according to whether cohabitation preceded marriage to obtain further insights into the different contexts of these relationships and the extent to which we can observe a continuum of relationship intensity in our various measures across the different types of relationships.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael S. Pollard & Kathleen Mullan Harris, 2013. "Cohabitation and Marriage Intensity Consolidation, Intimacy, and Commitment," Working Papers WR-1001, RAND Corporation.
    • Handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:wr-1001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/WR1000/WR1001/RAND_WR1001.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lynne Casper & Philip Cohen, 2000. "How does POSSLQ measure up? Historical estimates of cohabitation," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 37(2), pages 237-245, May.
    2. Larry Bumpass, 1990. "What’s happening to the family? Interactions between demographic and institutional change," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 27(4), pages 483-498, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kasey J. Eickmeyer & Wendy D. Manning & Monica A. Longmore & Peggy C. Giordano, 2023. "Exploring the Married-Cohabiting Income Pooling Gap Among Young Adults," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 44(4), pages 990-1006, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brian C. O'Neill & Deborah Balk & Melanie Brickman & Markos Ezra, 2001. "A Guide to Global Population Projections," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 4(8), pages 203-288.
    2. Emily Dohrman & Bruce Fallick, 2020. "Is the Middle Class Worse Off Than It Used to Be?," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, vol. 2020(03), pages 1-6, February.
    3. Sarah Hayford & S. Morgan, 2008. "The quality of retrospective data on Cohabitation," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 45(1), pages 129-141, February.
    4. Judith A. Seltzer, 2019. "Family Change and Changing Family Demography," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(2), pages 405-426, April.
    5. Steven Ruggles, 2015. "Patriarchy, Power, and Pay: The Transformation of American Families, 1800–2015," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(6), pages 1797-1823, December.
    6. Wendy D. Manning, 2020. "Young Adulthood Relationships in an Era of Uncertainty: A Case for Cohabitation," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(3), pages 799-819, June.
    7. R. A. Moffitt & R. Reville & A. E. Winkler, "undated". "Beyond single mothers: Cohabition, marriage, and the U.S. welfare system," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers 1068-95, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty.
    8. Laura Tach & Alicia Eads, 2015. "Trends in the Economic Consequences of Marital and Cohabitation Dissolution in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(2), pages 401-432, April.
    9. Jennifer Kane, 2013. "A Closer Look at the Second Demographic Transition in the US: Evidence of Bidirectionality from a Cohort Perspective (1982–2006)," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 32(1), pages 47-80, February.
    10. Alicia Adsera, 2006. "An Economic Analysis of the Gap Between Desired and Actual Fertility: The Case of Spain," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 75-95, March.
    11. Marcia J. Carlson & Sara S. McLanahan, 2009. "Fathers in Fragile Families," Working Papers 1189, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    12. Vo, Thang T. & Truong, Thiet-Ha, 2023. "Gender division of household workforce in Vietnam: Role of international trade and fertility," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 1696-1718.
    13. Sebastian Klüsener & Brienna Perelli-Harris & Nora E. Sánchez Gassen, 2012. "Spatial aspects of the rise of nonmarital fertility across Europe since 1960: the role of states and regions in shaping patterns of change," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2012-005, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    14. Serap Kavas & Ayse Gunduz-Hosgor, 2010. "Divorce and family change revisited: professional women’s divorce experience in Turkey," Demográfia, Hungarian Demographic Research Institute, vol. 53(5), pages 102-126.
    15. Chakravorty, Swastika & Goli, Srinivas, 2021. "Family Structure, Economic Outcomes and Perceived Change in Economic Well-being in India," OSF Preprints 23kvs, Center for Open Science.
    16. Kate H. Choi & Rachel E. Goldberg, 2020. "The Social Significance of Interracial Cohabitation: Inferences Based on Fertility Behavior," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(5), pages 1727-1751, October.
    17. Christine Bachrach, 2014. "Culture and Demography: From Reluctant Bedfellows to Committed Partners," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(1), pages 3-25, February.
    18. Jose Maria Fernandez-Crehuet & J. Ignacio Gimenez-Nadal & Ignacio Danvila del Valle, 2017. "The International Multidimensional Fertility Index: The European Case," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 1331-1358, July.
    19. Christopher S. Carpenter & Samuel T. Eppink & Gilbert Gonzales & Tara McKay, 2021. "Effects of Access to Legal Same‐Sex Marriage on Marriage and Health," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(2), pages 376-411, March.
    20. Margaret L. Usdansky, 2003. "Single-Parent Families and Their Impact on Children: Changing Portrayals in Popular Magazines in the U.S., 1900-1998," Working Papers 952, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:wr-1001. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benson Wong (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lpranus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.