News Releases
For Immediate Release: Feb. 13, 2003
Contact: Valerie K. Oppenheimer
Dept. of Sociology, UCLA
Phone: 310-275-2966
E-Mail: valko@ucla.edu
Young Men: Ready to Marry? Or to Live Together?
(Washington, DC) In recent decades, a rapidly increasing number of unmarried
American couples have been living together. A substantial proportion of these cohabitors are engaged, but there is also evidence that young men's employment stability and future economic prospects influence cohabiting and marital decisions. Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer, a sociologist at UCLA, published in the latest issue of the journal Demography a study of the complex connections between work history, education, and earnings, on the one hand, and cohabitation and marriage, on the other. The study uses a
national sample of American men born between 1957 and 1965, the younger half of the Baby Boom generation, which came of age during major changes in society's acceptance of premarital sexual relations.
Oppenheimer found that when young men's earnings are very low, they are unlikely to enter either a cohabitation or a marriage. Men working less than full-time year-round may start a relationship but, compared to steady workers, that relationship is much more likely to be a cohabitation than a marriage. In that case, Oppenheimer argues, cohabitation provides a "fallback strategy" for men whose careers are not yet well established. A
college education affects the probabilities of forming a union in slightly different ways for white and black men. Whites with college degrees are more likely than high school graduates to marry; however, black male college graduates are more likely either to marry or cohabit.
Cohabitation frequently leads to marriage for whites, although not blacks. This is partly because a steady work history increases the likelihood of marriage, and blacks were in a much poorer labor market position than whites. This finding is also consistent with previous research indicating that a substantial proportion of cohabitors are engaged, with the result that a high proportion of cohabitations rapidly end in marriages. For example, over 50% of white cohabitations ended in a marriage within three years after they were formed, compared to 22% of black. However, men with recently unstable work histories were not more likely to separate. This suggests, once again, that some cohabitations may represent an adaptive strategy for young men in an unsettled career state.
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