The next ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC) seminar will be held on Thursday 8 August with Brienna Perelli-Harris and Mark Lyons-Amos from the University of Southampton giving a presentation on “Partnership patterns in the United States and across Europe: which matters more – education or country?”
Previous studies have found an association between education and individual aspects of union formation, such as prevalence of cohabitation, entrance into marriage or cohabitation, and divorce. However, little is known about the relationship between education and holistic partnership patterns that involve multiple transitions. Here we use latent class growth analysis to compare the educational distribution of partnership patterns in the United States and 14 countries in Europe. Latent class growth curves show how women can change their relationship status (never partnered, cohabiting, married after cohabiting, directly married, or separated) between the ages of 15-45. Using statistical tests, we find that eight classes best fit the data. We then use multinomial logit models to determine whether education is associated with the eight latent classes. Our results indicate an association between education and classes showing the postponement of marriage in all countries, but a less consistent association between education and classes reflecting long-term cohabitation and union dissolution. More importantly, however, we find that country of residence explains more of the variation in class membership than education, and that the role of country relative to education is becoming more pronounced over time. Although education appears to be important for determining the timing of marriage, the increasing variation in behavior between countries has become more essential for understanding partnership patterns.
The seminar will be held on Thursday 8 August at 3-4pm in room 58/1009. There will be refreshments in the CPC Meeting Room (58/2041) after the seminar. For further information, please visit www.cpc.ac.uk