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Rising numbers of young unmarried men in India reflect a marriage squeeze that goes beyond the shortage of brides created by sex-selective abortion. We describe a decline in men's marriageability caused by their falling economic prospects at the same time as families of brides are increasingly seeking grooms with stable employment. We group young men into those without jobs or much education, those with education but no work, and the privileged few with education as well as employment. This classification resolves some of the seeming contradictions in the qualitative literature on marriage in India. Some of this literature talks about the rising prevalence of bride price and some about the persistence of dowry, while some papers reflect in general on the costs of being young, male, and aimless. Our commentary includes a review of the growing literature on the physiological and (perhaps) consequently behavioural and health outcomes of men's anomie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a large literature investigating migrant marriage or fertility, little research has examined how childbearing and partnerships are interrelated. In this paper, we investigate how childbearing and partnership trajectories evolve and interact over the life course for immigrants and their descendants and how the relationship varies by migrant origin. We apply multichannel sequence analysis to rich longitudinal survey data from France and find significant differences in family-related behaviour between immigrants, their descendants, and the native French. Immigrants' family behaviour is characterized by stronger association between marriage and childbearing than in the native population. However, there are significant differences across migrant groups. Turkish immigrants exhibit the most conservative family pathways. By contrast, the family behaviour of European immigrants is similar to that of the native population. The study also demonstrates that the family behaviour of some descendant groups has gradually become indistinguishable from that of the native French, whereas for other groups significant differences in family behaviour persist. Supplementary material for this article is available at: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition to adulthood around the world is increasingly characterized by young people's desire to form independent households. Forming such households in Egypt requires buying or building a dwelling or obtaining a rental unit. Policies governing housing markets, such as rent control, and limited financing options have historically made access to housing for young couples challenging. In this paper, we use a difference-in-difference approach to evaluate how the liberalization of rental markets in Egypt affected the timing of marriage. We find that Egypt's 1996 rental reforms accelerated marriages and led to a reversal in the trend of rising age at marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The total fertility of Muslims in Israel declined from a level of nearly ten children per woman in the mid-1960s to about 4.5 children per woman in the mid-1980s. It then remained close to 4.5 children per woman for nearly 20 years. The reasons for this long stall in the fertility decline are not understood. This paper explores the roles of marriage patterns and marital fertility in the development of the stall in Muslim fertility decline in Israel from 1986 to 2003. The results show that the fertility decline among Muslims in Israel stalled owing to abrupt discontinuations of declines in both the proportion married and marital fertility. The former is explained by the relaxation of a marriage squeeze that had resulted from past fluctuations in fertility. These findings have implications for debates on the determinants of fertility stalls and for demographic transition theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on the baby boom and its causes has shown that common explanations, such as the recuperation of births following the Great Depression or Second World War, are not sufficient to account for the phenomenon. However, that research has stressed the role of increasing nuptiality. In this paper, we argue that the increase in survivorship of children and young people that resulted from the epidemiologic transition accounted for a large portion of the increased number of births during the baby boom. We use a microsimulation model to assess the respective roles of mortality, nuptiality, fertility, and immigration on the size and dynamics of the boom in Quebec, Canada. Results show that decreasing mortality contributed significantly to the baby boom, along with immigration and nuptiality changes, while fertility rates attenuated the phenomenon. These results substantiate the hypothesis that the epidemiologic transition was an important cause of the baby boom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Own Children Method (OCM) is an indirect procedure for deriving age-specific fertility rates and total fertility from children living with their mothers at a census or survey. The method was designed primarily for the calculation of overall fertility, although there are variants that allow the calculation of marital fertility. In this paper we argue that the standard variants for calculating marital fertility can produce misleading results and require strong assumptions, particularly when applied to social or spatial subgroups. We present two new variants of the method for calculating marital fertility: the first of these allows for the presence of non-marital fertility and the second also permits the more robust calculation of rates for social subgroups of the population. We illustrate and test these using full-count census data for England and Wales in 1911.

In spite of the vast importance of weather shocks for population processes, limited work has investigated the micro-level processes through which weather shocks influence the transition to adulthood in low-income contexts. This paper provides a conceptual overview and empirical investigation of how weather shocks impact the timing, sequencing, and characteristics of young women's life course transitions in low-income rural settings. Drawing on the case of Malawi, we combine repeated cross-sections of georeferenced Demographic and Health Survey data with georeferenced climate and crop calendar data to assess how growing-season drought shocks affect young women's life course transitions. Discrete-time event history analyses indicate that in this context, exposure to growing-season drought in adolescence has an accelerating effect on young women's transitions into first unions—both marriage and cohabitation—and into first births within unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent decades have seen considerable research on cohabitation without marriage, the study of marriage without cohabitation has not fared as well. Prior work on the latter has emphasized the importance of occupational stratification, but ignored the social context around occupation, particularly regarding labour mobility and economic development. In this paper, we outline the significance of contemporary labour mobility and concomitant occupational stratification for the risk of non-cohabiting marriage, and use data from the IPUMS-International project to provide a cross-national accounting of non-cohabiting marriage. We focus on two issues: first, how does prevalence vary across countries, across time, and with respect to economic development? Second, how do the core dynamics of labour mobility-including migration, occupational status, and economic development-influence the probability of non-cohabiting marriage? Results indicate broad cross-national differences in prevalence, increasing risk over time, and a pattern of accumulating risk associated with multifaceted social disadvantage.

In this paper, we use longitudinal data to investigate how parental death and divorce influence young women's own experience of divorce in Malawi, a setting where women marry relatively early and unions are fragile. We find that maternal death and parental divorce are positively associated with divorce for young women but, after controlling for socio-demographic and marital characteristics, only the association with maternal death remains statistically significant. Maternal and paternal death are both strongly associated with women's post-divorce living arrangements, which in turn affects their material well-being. This finding suggests that divorcing at a young age shapes the subsequent life chances of women; although some women return to their parental home and may have the opportunity to reset the transition to adulthood, other women begin their 20s as head of their own household and with considerable material disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Girls' school participation has expanded considerably in the developing world over the last few decades, a phenomenon expected to have substantial consequences for reproductive behaviour. Using Demographic and Health Survey data from 43 countries, this paper examines trends and differentials in the mean ages at three critical life-cycle events for young women: first sexual intercourse, first marriage, and first birth. We measure the extent to which trends in the timing of these events are driven either by the changing educational composition of populations or by changes in behaviour within education groups. Mean ages have risen over time in all regions for all three events, except age at first sex in Latin America and the Caribbean. Results from a decomposition exercise indicate that increases in educational attainment, rather than trends within education groups, are primarily responsible for the overall trends. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.

This study uses prospective data spanning 27 years (1991–2018) to explore the relationship between economic precariousness and transitions to first co-residential partnership among Britons aged 18–34 across three dimensions: age, historical time, and sex. Economic precariousness is measured using eight objective and subjective indicators, including income, employment, housing, and financial perceptions. Our results show that economic precariousness has a strong negative relationship with entering the first co-residential partnership among those aged 20–30, but the pattern is less clear among the youngest and oldest. Objective measures are easier to interpret than subjective measures. Historical analyses suggest that not being employed decreases the probability of union formation more in recessionary periods than in non-recessionary ones. Among working women, low labour income started to be a predictor of union formation in the most recent periods. Labour income is the only indicator presenting trends in line with our hypotheses across all dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim is to examine how mental health is affected by cohabitation and marriage. Individual fixed-effects models are estimated from Norwegian register data containing information about consultations with a general practitioner because of mental health conditions in 2006–19. Mental health, as indicated by annual number of consultations, improves over several years before cohabitation. For those marrying their cohabiting partner, there is a weak further reduction in consultations until the wedding, but no decline afterwards. In other words, formalization of the union does not seem to confer additional mental health benefits. However, marriage may be considered a marker of favourable earlier development in mental health. In contrast, there is further improvement after direct marriage, as well as stronger improvement over the years just preceding direct marriage. Patterns are quite similar for women and men. Overall, the results suggest that the mental health benefits of cohabitation and marriage are similar. Supplementary material for this article is available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2022.2063933. Note: numbers in brackets refer to supplementary notes that can be found at the end of the supplementary material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increases in cohabitation and in childbearing within cohabitation raise questions about who marries. Most studies have found that childbearing within cohabitation is associated with disadvantage; here, we examine the role of relationship happiness and whether it helps to explain this association. Using the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009–17), our competing risk hazard models follow respondents as they transition: (1) from cohabitation into marriage or childbearing; and (2) from marriage or cohabitation into childbearing. We find that marriage risks are highest among individuals who are happiest with their relationship. On average, the association between relationship quality and childbearing operates through marriage: the happiest individuals marry, and those who marry have children. While higher socio-economic status is weakly associated with marriage, conception, and separation, the associations do not differ by relationship happiness. The findings indicate that overall, relationship happiness appears to be most salient for transitions into marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The family life courses of immigrants and their descendants have been widely studied as indicators of societal integration. But largely absent are investigations into the role of cohabitation in the family lives of these subpopulations. Using Norwegian register data on individuals who were either native born or who immigrated before age 18, we analyse the formation of first cohabiting and marital unions. Next, we compare associations between endogamous or exogamous partner choice and transitions from these first unions. Results showed that the children of immigrants were less likely to cohabit endogamously, but overall more likely to cohabit exogamously and to marry than Norwegians without a migration background. Endogamous migrant-background cohabiting unions were least likely to dissolve, whereas cohabiting couples involving one or two majority partners were less marriage prone than endogamous migrant-background couples. Similarly, among those married, endogamous migrant-background couples were less likely to divorce than their exogamous counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), we examine whether and how the health benefits of having two biological parents in a continuous marital relationship vary by maternal nativity and ethnicity, comparing UK-born White mothers with: (1) White mothers born in wealthy countries; (2) ethnic minority mothers from South Asia; and (3) ethnic minority mothers born in Africa. Making novel use of classification and regression tree (CART) methods, we examine whether marital status is a uniform marker of economic advantage or better health-related behaviours across the four maternal nativity and ethnic groups. The findings, which indicate that the health-related advantages associated with parental marriage are not uniform across the four nativity and ethnic groups, have implications for future research on family gaps in well-being and the socio-economic determinants of health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the formation of endogamous and exogamous marriages among immigrants and their descendants in the United Kingdom. We apply event history analysis to data from the Understanding Society study and use multiple imputation to determine the type of marriage for individuals with missing information on the origin of their spouse. The analysis shows, first, significant differences among immigrants and their descendants in the likelihood of marrying within and outside their ethnic groups. While immigrants from European countries have relatively high exogamous marriage rates, South Asians exhibit a high likelihood of marrying a partner from their own ethnic group; Caribbean people hold an intermediate position. Second, the descendants of immigrants have lower endogamous and higher exogamous marriage rates than their parents; however, for some ethnic groups, particularly South Asians, the differences across generations are small, suggesting that changes in marriage patterns have been slower than expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1950s and 1960s there was an unprecedented marriage boom in the United States. This was followed in the 1970s by a marriage bust. Some argue that both phenomena are cohort effects, while others argue that they are period effects. The study reported here tested the major period and cohort theories of the marriage boom and bust, by estimating an age-period-cohort model of first marriage for the years 1925-79 using census microdata. The results of the analysis indicate that the marriage boom was mostly a period effect, although there were also cohort influences. More specifically, the hypothesis that the marriage boom was mostly a response to rising wages is shown to be consistent with the data. However, much of the marriage bust can be accounted for by unidentified cohort influences, at least until 1980. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low school attainment, early marriage, and low age at first birth of females are major policy concerns in less developed countries. This study jointly estimated the determinants of educational attainment, marriage age, and age at first birth among females aged 12–25 in Madagascar, explicitly accounting for the endogeneities that arose from modelling these related outcomes simultaneously. An additional year of schooling results in a delay to marriage of 1.5 years and marrying 1 year later delays age at first birth by 0.5 years. Parents’ education and wealth also have important effects on schooling, marriage, and age at first birth, with a woman's first birth being delayed by 0.75 years if her mother had 4 additional years of schooling. Overall, our results provide rigorous evidence for the critical role of education—both individual women's own and that of their parents—in delaying the marriage and fertility of young women. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We propose a typology of different meanings of cohabitation that combines cohabiters’intentions to marry with a general attitude toward marriage, using competing risk analyses to examine whether some cohabiters are more prone than others to marry or to separate. Using data (N = 1,258) from four waves of the German Family Panel (PAIRFAM) and a supplementary study (DEMODIFF), we compared eastern and western German cohabiters of the birth cohorts 1971–73 and 1981–83. Western Germans more frequently view cohabitation as a step in the marriage process, whereas eastern Germans more often cohabit as an alternative to marriage. Taking into account marital attitudes reveals that cohabiters without marriage plans differ from those with plans in their relationship careers, and also shows that cohabiters who plan to marry despite holding a less favourable view of marriage are less likely to realize their plans than cohabiters whose intentions and attitudes are more congruent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, 1998–2010, we investigated the extent to which patterns of alcohol consumption in Russia are associated with the subsequent likelihood of entry into cohabitation and marriage. Using discrete-time event history analysis we estimated for 16–50 year olds the extent to which the probabilities of entry into the two types of union were affected by the amount of alcohol drunk and the pattern of drinking, adjusted to allow for social and demographic factors including income, employment, and health. The results show that individuals who did not drink alcohol were less likely to embark on either cohabitation or marriage, that frequent consumption of alcohol was associated with a greater chance of entering unmarried cohabitation than of entering into a marriage, and that heavy drinkers were less likely to convert their relationship from cohabitation to marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Building on recent European studies, we used the Survey of Income and Program Participation to provide the first analysis of fertility differences between groups of US college graduates by their undergraduate field of study. We used multilevel event-history models to investigate possible institutional and selection mechanisms linking field of study to delayed fertility and childlessness. The results are consistent with those found for Europe in showing an overall difference of 10 percentage points between levels of childlessness across fields, with the lowest levels occurring for women in health and education, intermediate levels for women in science and technology, and the highest levels for women in arts and social sciences. The mediating roles of the following field characteristics were assessed: motherhood employment penalties; percentage of men; family attitudes; and marriage patterns. Childlessness was higher among women in fields with a moderate representation of men, less traditional family attitudes, and late age at first marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]