COHABITATION

Cohabitation can be defined as a nonmarital coresidential union–that is, the relationship of a couple who live together in the same dwelling but who are not married to each other. Such relationships can also be called informal unions, since, unlike marriages, they are normally not regulated by law, nor is the occurrence of a cohabiting relationship officially registered. Cohabitation seems to be increasing in prevalence all over the Western world. The trend is regarded as an inherent part of the transformation of Western family patterns that has been called the second demographic transition. Less is known about cohabitation than about most other demographic phenomena. Detailed information about it, typically focusing on or limited to women only, comes mainly from surveys.

Levels and Trends

The Scandinavian countries have the highest levels of cohabitation in Europe. At the other extreme are the Southern European countries, together with Ireland. The rest of Europe falls in between. In the mid-1990s 32 percent of Swedish women 20 to 39 years old were cohabiting, and 27 percent of Danish women. In southern Europe less than 10 percent of women in this age group were cohabiting–in Italy, only two percent. Countries in the intermediate category show figures in the range 8 to 18 percent, with France, the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland at the high end, and Belgium, Great Britain, and Germany at the low end. Where cohabitation is well established, the first union is almost always a cohabiting union. (In Sweden, less than five percent of young women start their partnered life by getting married.)

Cohabitation in the United States has been increasing, both within cohorts and over time. By 1995 about a quarter of unmarried women between the ages 25 and 39 were living with an unmarried partner. This would place the United States near the lower end of the intermediate European group. Australia and Canada (with the exception of the province of Quebec, where cohabitation occurs more frequently than in the rest of the country) are similarly positioned, while New Zealand is at the upper end of that group.

Trends over time are difficult to assess. It seems likely that cohabitation started to become common in Sweden in the 1960s, followed by Denmark, and somewhat later by Norway. According to Ron Lesthaeghe, there was a second phase, roughly between 1970 and 1985, when premarital cohabitation spread from the Nordic countries to other parts of the developed world. Children born within cohabiting unions also first became a significant share within all births in the Nordic countries. There, by the 1990s, roughly half of all births were nonmarital. (Among first births in Sweden, two-thirds are non-marital; 84 percent of those are born to cohabiting parents.) Outside Scandinavia, except for a few countries (France, Austria, and New Zealand), cohabiting unions are typically childless. In both Sweden and Austria, the median age at first birth is lower than the median age at first marriage.

Cohabitation everywhere is most common among young people, primarily those in their twenties, but there is also a noticeable trend in many countries for older women increasingly to choose to cohabit instead of marrying after the dissolution of a marriage (postmarital cohabitation).

Cofactors and Explanations

In contemporary Western countries, many choices that were largely socially prescribed in the past have become options. This creates a new set of risks and a higher degree of uncertainty for individuals. New stages in the life course have emerged, resulting in a "destandardization" of family formation patterns. Cohabitation and living independently without a partner before moving into a couple relationship are such stages. Cohabitation can thus be seen as one component in a process in which individual behavior is becoming less determined by tradition and institutional arrangements and more open to individual choice.

It has been argued that those who cohabit desire something fundamentally different from a marital union. Cohabitors may demand more personal autonomy, gender equity, and flexibility; they may have chosen cohabitation in order to avoid binding commitments. However, these desires are likely to change over the life course. Cohabiting couples in Sweden tend to marry at a stage in their life course connected with a preference for union stability. This stage is usually reached after less than five years spent cohabiting and becoming a parent. Attitude surveys confirm that despite the existence of widespread and widely accepted nonmarital cohabitation (even when children are born into those unions), marriage remains a positive option among young adults in Sweden.

Demographers disagree on whether country differences in the prevalence of cohabitation are likely to disappear over time, or if they represent fundamental structural and cultural differences between societies that will persist. Within a society, diffusion theory can describe the spread of the practice. In a first phase, unmarried cohabitation is a distinct deviation from norms, practiced only by those who oppose the institution of marriage or have insufficient means for marriage. In a second phase cohabitation becomes a short-lived (and childless) introduction to marriage. Finally, when social acceptance for cohabitation has become established, cohabiting relationships of long duration become common, as well as childbearing within these unions.

Cohabitation, Union Dissolution, and Fertility

It is well known that cohabiting unions are more fragile than marriages. Differences seem to be most marked at short durations. It has also been shown that married couples who began their relationship by cohabiting face an increased risk of marital dissolution. It is likely that this is due to self-selection of more dissolution-prone individuals into cohabitation before marriage.

With the exception of Sweden, levels of cohabitational childbearing are low in most countries even when cohabitation is common. Within the foreseeable future it does not seem likely that marriage will be replaced by cohabitation as the preferred type of union for procreation. Antonella Pinelli and co-authors have found that cohabitation favors childlessness and postpones the arrival of the first child. Thereby it contributes to lower overall fertility. However, many cohabiting unions are transformed into marriages, and this favors fertility. These complex interrelationships make definite conclusions difficult. On the one hand, the weakening of the norms upholding marriage is likely to have some negative effects on fertility. On the other hand, in egalitarian countries with extensive institutional supports for parenthood, "modern" patterns of behavior, such as cohabitation, may be more compatible with fertility.

Legal Status

As of 2000 France and the Netherlands were the only countries to have instituted formal registration of partnerships for both heterosexual and homosexual couples, making registered cohabitation functionally and legally equivalent to marriage in most respects. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland have taken a more pragmatic approach to cohabiting couples. Over time family law has come to be applied to married and cohabiting couples in much the same way, without completely erasing the differences. For example, cohabiting couples do not automatically acquire inheritance rights on a partner's property, nor do they have the legal responsibility to provide for each other. However, the relationship between parents and their children is regulated in the same way for cohabiting couples as for married couples.

See also: Family: Future; Fertility, Nonmarital; Marriage; Second Demographic Transition.

bibliography

Bernhardt, Eva. 2002. "Cohabitation and Marriage among Young Adults in Sweden: Attitudes, Expectations and Plans." In Scandinavian Population Studies, Volume 13: Nordic Demography: Trends and Differentials. Oslo, Norway: Unipub Forlag.

Bumpass, Larry, and Hsien-Hen Lu. 2000. "Trends in Cohabitation and Implications for Children's Family Contexts in the United States." Population Studies 54(1): 29–41.

Duvander, Ann-Zofie. 1999. "The Transition from Cohabitation to Marriage: A Longitudinal Study of the Propensity to Marry in Sweden in the Early 1990s." Journal of Family Issues 20(5):698–717.

Kiernan, Kathleen. 2002. "The State of European Unions: An Analysis of FFS Data on Partnership Formation and Dissolution." In Partnership and Fertility: Unity and Diversity, ed. Miroslav Macura and Gijs Beets. New York and Geneva: United Nations.

Klijzing, Eric, and Miroslav Macura. 1997. "Cohabitation and Extra-Marital Childbearing: Early FFS Evidence." In Proceedings of the IUSSP General Conference, Beijing. Liège: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.

Lesthaeghe, Ron. 1995. "The Second Demographic Transition in Western Countries: An Interpretation." In Gender and Family Change in Industrialized Countries, ed. Karen O. Mason and Ann-Magritt Jensen. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lillard, Lee A. et al. 1995. "Premarital Cohabitation and Subsequent Marital Dissolution: A Matter of Self-Selection?" Demography 32: 437–497.

Mills, Melinda. 2000. The Transformation of Partnerships: Canada, the Netherlands and the Russian Federation in the Age of Modernity. Amsterdam: Thela Thesis Population Studies Series.

Noack, Turid. 2001. "Cohabitation in Norway: An Accepted and Gradually More Regulated Way of Living." International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 15: 102–117.

Pinelli, Antonella, Alessandra DeRose, Paola Di Guilio, and Alessandra Rosina. 2002. "Interrelations Between Partnership and Fertility Behaviours." In Partnership and Fertility: Unity and Diversity, ed. Miroslav Macura and Gijs Beets. New York and Geneva: United Nations.

Eva Bernhardt