Partnership patterns in the United States and across Europe: "Diverging destinies" or "diverging contexts"?

Abstract

Patterns of partnership formation and dissolution are changing dramatically across the Western world. McLanahan (2004) argued that these changes are the result of social and economic changes which have led to “diverging destinies,” with the highly educated postponing marriage and the lower educated more likely to divorce or cohabit. Evidence for these arguments is primarily from the United States, and less is known about the educational gradient of partnership trajectories in other countries. At the same time, the variation in partnership behavior has also increased across countries, suggesting that country context plays an important role. Here we use latent class growth models to compare the educational gradient of partnership trajectories in the United States and 14 countries in Europe and to test whether education or country matters more. Our results indicate a consistent positive educational gradient for partnership patterns showing the postponement of marriage, but a less consistent gradient for patterns reflecting long-term cohabitation and union dissolution. Although the U.S. results support the “diverging destinies” hypothesis, the evidence from the other countries is weak. Instead, country context explains more of the variation in class membership than education, with context becoming more important over time. The divergence in behaviors across country contexts suggests that social, cultural, political, and economic developments are essential for changes in partnership formation and dissolution - more important than educational level

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Identifiers

ORCID for Brienna Perelli-Harris: orcid.org/0000-0001-8234-4007

ORCID for Teresa McGowan: orcid.org/0009-0002-9231-3743

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