The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

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

Partnership patterns in the United States and across Europe: "Diverging destinies" or "diverging contexts"?
Partnership patterns in the United States and across Europe: "Diverging destinies" or "diverging contexts"?
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
53
ESRC Centre for Population Change
Perelli-Harris, Brienna
9d3d6b25-d710-480b-8677-534d58ebe9ed
Lyons-Amos, Mark
ceedb006-c671-4e2d-8fed-bef1cf40603d
McGowan, Teresa
4524e894-04de-4822-8508-f4b966e12ae2
Perelli-Harris, Brienna
9d3d6b25-d710-480b-8677-534d58ebe9ed
Lyons-Amos, Mark
ceedb006-c671-4e2d-8fed-bef1cf40603d
McGowan, Teresa
4524e894-04de-4822-8508-f4b966e12ae2

Perelli-Harris, Brienna and Lyons-Amos, Mark , McGowan, Teresa (ed.) (2014) Partnership patterns in the United States and across Europe: "Diverging destinies" or "diverging contexts"? (ESRC Centre for Population Change Working Paper Series, 53) Southampton, GB. ESRC Centre for Population Change

Record type: Monograph (Working Paper)

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

Text
WP53_2014_Partnership_patterns_in_the_United_States_and_across_Europe_Perelli_Harris_et_al.pdf - Other
Download (1MB)

More information

Published date: 11 August 2014
Organisations: Social Statistics & Demography, Centre for Population Change

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 367936
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/367936
PURE UUID: a4245aa2-6748-47a1-8070-00a99fd67d88
ORCID for Brienna Perelli-Harris: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-8234-4007
ORCID for Teresa McGowan: ORCID iD orcid.org/0009-0002-9231-3743

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 12 Sep 2014 09:07
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:38

Export record

Contributors

Author: Mark Lyons-Amos
Editor: Teresa McGowan ORCID iD

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×