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Ben Wilson, University of Stockholm, Alice Goisis, London School of Economics and Political Science and Rachel Stuchbury, UCL
(Project no. 0301808, previously 30180)
The first aim is to analyse patterns of cohabitation in England and Wales in 2011. The second aim is to explore how these patterns have changed since 2001, and how they vary (compared with other partnership forms) for different population groups. The analysis will use descriptive statistics and regression (GLM).
Although recent research has investigated patterns of cohabitation in the UK and other European countries, little is known about variation in the types of cohabitation across the life course. This is particularly important given that cohabitants are often assumed to be a homogenous group, and are often compared to the married population as though these are discrete choices and stable states.
The initial aim of this project will therefore be to analyse patterns of cohabitation in England and Wales in 2011. The initial research questions are:
- What are the socio-demographic profiles of cohabiting couples, with and without children, in 2011?
- How have these profiles changed compared with previous censuses, both in aggregate and longitudinally (for the same individuals over time)?
- How do the profiles of cohabiting families with children compare to married or lone parent families with children?
This analysis will focus on making a contribution to the academic literature. However, the results will also be of interest to policy-makers. Depending upon the initial findings, the project will then investigate cohabitation and other partnership forms for different population groups.
The initial analysis will focus on the age profile of cohabitation (and other partnership forms) in 2011, for individuals with and without children. This would use two extracts. The first would be at the adult level (e.g. for the cohabitants), and the second would be at the child level (e.g. for the children of cohabitants). In addition to checking the quality of the data, this analysis would provide confirmation (or not) that the findings can be generalised from the parent to the child level (and vice versa).
The project will then investigate how the age profile of cohabitation (and other partnership/family types) has changed over time. This includes an analysis of aggregate changes, as well as a longitudinal analysis of changes across the individual life course (e.g. from census to census). This analysis over time will initially focus on women with children, changes in their partnership status, and how these changes are associated with a range of characteristics, including the birth order of a woman's children.
For example, it may be that there are differences in age profiles between married and cohabiting families with children that can be usefully explained by variables such as health, education, employment, ethnicity, or migration history. It has also been hypothesised that cohabitation will not just be more prevalent in 2011 (compared with 2001), but also more prevalent across the life course.
Importantly, this research is also part of a larger project. Once the initial results are cleared as final outputs, they will be compared with similar results for France. The larger programme of work is to contrast patterns of partnership and family behaviour between E&W and France.