This paper deals with the topic of cohabiting fertility and its underlying educational gradient. My aim is to analyse, how cohabiting fertility has developed among women with different educational levels in various European countries and the USA. This topic is of major importance, because over the past decades, starting in the 1970s, there has been a huge increase not just in cohabitation, but also in cohabiting fertility across Europe and the USA.
Nevertheless, differences between countries persisted, displaying only a marginal increase and importance of cohabitation in family formation for some countries. Especially in South European countries like Spain and Italy, but also in Russia and Poland, the share of births within cohabitation remains low. In 2004, births within cohabitation only accounted for 10 percent of all births in Italy and 18 percent in Russia. In contrast Norway and France experienced a huge increase in cohabiting births accounting for over 50 percent of all births in 2004 (Perelli-Harris 2010). But even in these countries, fertility within cohabitation did not spread uniformly, showing a leading role for the Northern communities in Norway (Vitali et al. 2015), indicating that variation in cohabitation even exists within countries.
The main theory explaining the societal diffusion of both, cohabitation and childbearing within cohabitation, is the Second Demographic Transition (SDT). According to the SDT, there is a close connection with the ideational value change, leading to a greater social acceptance of behaviours like unmarried cohabitation, non-marital childbearing and divorce. Consequently, the SDT assumes cohabiting births to be more common among higher educated people, because these are ex-pected to break with old traditions and function as forerunners (Perelli-Harris et al. 2010).
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Background
2.1. Development of cohabitation
2.2. Types of cohabitation
2.3. Approaches
3. Empirical Results
4. Discussion
5. Bibliography
1. Introduction
This paper deals with the topic of cohabiting fertility and its underlying educational gradient. My aim is to analyse, how cohabiting fertility has developed among women with different educational levels in various European countries and the USA. This topic is of major importance, because over the past decades, starting in the 1970s, there has been a huge increase not just in cohabitation, but also in co- habiting fertility across Europe and the USA.
Nevertheless, differences between countries persisted, displaying only a marginal increase and importance of cohabitation in family formation for some countries. Especially in South European countries like Spain and Italy, but also in Russia and Poland, the share of births within cohabitation remains low. In 2004, births within cohabitation only accounted for 10 percent of all births in Italy and 18 percent in Russia. In contrast Norway and France experienced a huge increase in cohabiting births accounting for over 50 percent of all births in 2004 (Perelli-Harris 2010). But even in these countries, fertility within cohabitation didn´t spread uniformly, show- ing a leading role for the Northern communities in Norway (Vitali et al. 2015), indicating that variation in cohabitation even exists within countries.
The main theory explaining the societal diffusion of both, cohabitation and childbearing within cohabitation, is the Second Demographic Transition (SDT). According to the SDT, there is a close connection with the ideational value change, leading to a greater social acceptance of behaviours like unmarried cohabitation, non-marital childbearing and divorce. Consequently, the SDT assumes cohabiting births to be more common among higher educated people, because these are ex- pected to break with old traditions and function as forerunners (Perelli-Harris et al. 2010).
In the following, I will first start with giving an overview about the theoretical back- ground of cohabitation. I will give an overview about how cohabitation and childbearing within cohabitation have developed over time and describe the differ- ent ideal types of cohabitation that can be distinguished. Further I will present ap- proaches proposed by different researchers, which aim at explaining the diffusion of childbearing within cohabitation has undergone, especially regarding educa- tional differences among cohabiting women. The third part of this paper deals with studies and the empirical results, they found in various European countries concern- ing the educational differences in cohabiting fertility. Finally, I will give a short summary of the main findings and discuss the implications, these results suggest for further research and their consequences for the established.
2. Theoretical Background
2.1. Development of cohabitation
Over the last decades, cohabitation has become more widespread and gained im- portance as institution for family formation. Consequently, the rise in non-marital fertility is mainly due to a rise in cohabitation. Still, there are persistent differences in the emergence of cohabitation across countries. Cohabitation is most common in Northern European countries and France, while it is less prevalent in the South of Europe (Kiernan 2001).
Taking a more explicit view on these differences, Figure 1 displays the proportion of first union’s starting as unmarried cohabitation for thirteen European countries by different birth cohorts. The used data in this analysis include cohabitation rates of more birth cohorts and allow the observation of the development over a wider time span. In general, one can see an increase in the cohabitation rates in all coun- tries, but there is quite a variation, both in level and development. One can group the observed countries into three broad categories, differentiating between countries with high, medium and low cohabitation rates. As already assumed by Kiernan (2001), the results of Hiekel (2014) show a dominance of cohabitation as living arrangement in the North European countries and France. But the graph also shows a high prevalence of cohabitation in Austria, Germany, Belgium and the Nether- lands, which all have rates varying between 79 and 90 percent for the youngest birth cohorts. The observed countries in Central and Eastern Europe, show a medium expansion of cohabitation, with rates for the 1971-1980 birth cohort ranging be- tween 50 and 70 percent. Cohabitation is least frequent in Romania and Lithuania, which experienced an increase of cohabitation over the birth cohorts, but display the smallest cohabitation rates in all observed cohorts (Hiekel 2014).
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Figure 1: Share of first unions that start as cohabitation (Hiekel 2014, p.15 )
Logically, those countries having higher rates of cohabitation, are also those having high rates of non-marital births, which also include births in cohabitation. An anal- ysis for nine European countries shows that in most, the share of women having a first birth in cohabitation has increased. The highest increases for the two different cohorts, can be observed in Norway (from 6 to 28%) and Great Britain (from 4 to 17%). In contrast, the increases in Spain (from 2 to 6%), respectively Italy (from 2 to 5%), are only minimal (Kiernan 2001). The study of Perelli-Harris et al. (2010), points into the same direction. Figure 2 shows how the rates of births within cohab- itation have changed between 1970 and 2004. All eight European countries that were observed, have experienced an increase in cohabiting births, but the extent of this increase varies obviously. Whereas Norway and France report a rise from be- low 10 percent in 1970, to over 50 percent in 2004, the rates of cohabiting births only rose marginally in Italy and Russia, remaining on a level of 10 respectively 18 percent.
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Figure 2: Figure 3: Percent of cohabiting births in eight European countries (Perelli-Har- ris, 2010, p.779)
This development leads different researchers to assume that marriage and cohabi- tation have assimilated, suggesting cohabitation has become a substitute for mar- riage regarding family formation and childbearing (Perelli-Harris et al. 2013; Vi- tali et al 2015). Such a developing became contingent, because of changes in nor- mative views about cohabitation, as well as legal changes. While in the past, mar- riage was the predominate way for a couple to live together and have children, more liberal values conerning divorce, cohabitation and non-marital childbearing, lead to institutional changes, which granted unmarried couples with children al- most the same rights as married couples (Vitali et al 2015).
2.2. Types of cohabitation
It is important to acknowledge that there are different meanings of cohabitation, which in turn have differing relations with family formation and childbearing. Heuveline and Timberlake (2003) distinguish in their typology six ideal types of cohabitation that are summarized in Figure 3. They differentiate them according to three factors: the decision of an unmarried couples to live together, have children and stay together. They argue that these types are in a way stages of a developing process, all countries have to pass through at some point in time. In the first type, cohabitation is only seen as marginal. This type of cohabitation is most common in countries, where cohabitation is still not accepted by the society or even punished by law. In these countries, only a small number of people cohabitate and even fewer children are born and raised within cohabitation. In the second type, prelude to mar- riage, cohabitation is seen as an initialisation of marriage, a so called “testing ground” for the expected success of a following marriage (Heuveline/Timberlake 2004, p.1216). This type of cohabitation should mainly be transformed into mar- riage, with low rates of pre-marriage childbearing. The third cohabitation type, stage in the marriage process, is closely connected to the one previously described. Nevertheless, the authors claim that it is distinctive due to the timing of marriage and births, which are not bond to a precise order. The duration of these cohabita- tions are longer than in the prelude to marriage type, and more children should be born in these cohabitation unions. The next type defines cohabitation as alternative to single. This type was originally established by Rindfuss and Vanden Heuvel (1990, cited in Heuveline and Timberlake 2004), to capture those couple that choose to cohabit instead of living separately, but have no intentions to marry and form a family. These kind of cohabitations are considered as rather short lasting and predominantly end in separation. However, it has to be mentioned that this ideal type is rather typical for American cohabitation research.
In the fifth type, cohabitations are considered an alternative to marriage. Conse- quently, adults chose, driven by individual characteristics, to cohabit instead of marrying and at the same time start a family with children like a married couple. If the conditions of greater cultural and institutional support for childbearing within cohabitation are given, there should be higher frequency of cohabitation, which get less often transformed into marriage, and more children being born in these unions. Finally, the last type, sees cohabitation to be indistinguishable from marriage in a sense that couples are indifferent to marry, because of the broad social acceptance and support of childbearing in cohabitation (Heuveline/Timberlake 2004).
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Figure 4: Ideal types of cohabitation (Source: Heuveline/Timberlake 2004, p.1219)
2.3. Approaches
There are two general approaches concerning the relationship between fertility in cohabitation and educational level, proposed by different scholars. Whereas some see the Second Demographic Transition and its inherit value change as driving force, others stress the importance of economic uncertainty as reason for variation in cohabitating fertility between individuals with different educational levels.
The second demographic transition sees higher educated people as forerunners that broke with old traditions and therefore are more likely to adopt new behaviouras like living in cohabitation and have children within these unions. According to this, it is assumed that childbearing within cohabitation should be more common among higher educated people, because they are the group which are more likely to adopt new behaviours (Perelli-Harris et al. 2010). Nevertheless SDT was often confronted with criticism, because studies for single countries identified the least educated as the group starting childbearing within cohabitation.
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