The changing patterns of marriage and partnerships and their effects on fertility

In high fertility populations, marriage and marriage processes are known to play a critical role in regulating fertility. We examine the connection between changes in marriage and attitudes towards fertility. How do different generations of women perceive marriage and family? How do changes in family formation influence marital practices like marital timing, spouse choice, living arrangements and number and spacing of children? How have changes in attitude affected fertility behaviors?
We use qualitative data from Bungoma and Kwale, Kenya. We show that marriage processes are fast changing, favoring pragmatic unions, commonly called ‘come-we-stay’, most of which are driven by pre-marital pregnancies and lack of resources required for formal marriage. ‘Come-we-stay’ unions are common among the young cohort, but are increasingly becoming acceptable. Their temporary nature causes women to be insecure and desire more children to secure the marriage. The desire for permanence in the union is clearly shown to influence women’s fertility desires and outcomes.

This paper aims to investigate whether friends’ and peers’ behaviour influence an individual’s entry into marriage and parenthood during the transition to adulthood of young, U.S. adults. After first studying entry into marriage and parenthood as two independent events, we then examine them as interrelated processes, thereby considering them as two joint outcomes of an individual’s unique, underlying family-formation strategy. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we engage in a series of discrete time event history models to test whether the larger the number of friends and peers who get married (or have a child), the sooner the individual gets married (or has a child). Results show strong cross-friend effects on entry into parenthood, whereas entry into marriage is only affected by peer effects. Estimates of a multiprocess model show that cross-friend effects on entry into parenthood remain strongly significant even when we control for cross-process unobserved heterogeneity.

The study addresses the diversity of cohabitation across Europe and examines whether the meanings cohabiters attach to their unions are differently associated with intentions to have a child. Using data from the Generations and Gender Surveys on 3,006 cohabiters from nine European countries, we propose a cohabitation typology, based on intentions to marry, attitudes towards marriage, and subjective economic deprivation, and explore whether the links between cohabitation type and fertility intentions differ across Western and Eastern European countries. We find that the meaning of cohabitation, net of other covariates, influences fertility intentions and that, although cohabitation is quickly overtaking direct marriage as the leading form of union entry, there is little empirical evidence supporting the view that marriage and childbearing decisions are about to detach completely. In all countries examined, cohabiters who view cohabitation as a “prelude to marriage” are most likely to report short-term fertility intentions.

Gender is the social construction of attributes based on the sexes. With this in perspective, dominance is attributed to the masculinity of males; and subordination tends to be for the females. The focus of this study is based on the issue of political subordination in the private sphere of the household. Particularly, the autonomy status and need for family planning is described. This will involve an analysis between women who are cohabiting with their partners and those who are married using the 2008 NDHS.
For both types of unions among women, the variable that influence met need for family planning is education. For married women, it also includes employment and residence. Lack of justification for intimate partner violence has a positive effect whereby it decreases the likelihood of having unmet need. The curious observation is with gaining autonomy in the household; having an increased level of such leads to having unmet need. But among those in consensual union, autonomy is observed to have no effect on this regard.
There is an apparent difference between women who are formally married and those who are cohabiting with their partners; which is a social arrangement that is increasing in prevalence in the country.

In this paper, I test whether highly educated women in India are now choosing marriage partners who are “equals” in terms of educational and professional achievements rather than choosing partners primarily based on caste. The underlying research questions are - (i) Are the marriage preferences different across highly educated women from different time cohorts? (ii) Are the marriage preferences different across highly educated women from different economic classes? (iii) Are the marriage preferences different across highly educated women from the same cohort depending on whether they are formally employed or not? (iv) Is caste playing a less significant role in marital matching for the newer generation of educated Indian women? Or are their multiple gradients of preferences, that is, marry an “equal” but within the same caste? I use data from the India Human Development Survey, 2005. To operationalize equal educational and professional standing, I will match the education levels, occupation codes, and wage levels. Of course, a perfect match (doctors only marrying doctors) is not expected. However, broad occupational matching such as professionals or managers and similar wage levels is expected. I expect to observe a diminishing gap in husbands’ and wives’ education and employment outcomes across cohorts of highly educated women.

Recent surveys show that cohabitation is gradually spreading in East Asia while it largely remains to be a precursor to marriage rather than an alternative. This study presents the results of comparative analysis of the effects of premarital cohabitation on the timing of family formation in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, France, Sweden and the U.S., drawing on microdata from the 2009 Survey on Comparative Study of Family Policies in East Asia and the 2005 Comparative Opinion Survey on Declining-Birthrate Societies, which were conducted by the Section for Measures against Declining Birthrate, the Cabinet Office of Japan.
The proportional hazard models were applied to the microdata for each sex of six countries in the 2009 and 2005 surveys. Dependent variables include the hazard of first marriage, first birth, second birth and third birth. Independent variables include education, urban-rural residence (citizenship and ethnicity for Singapore), premarital cohabitation experiences and the interaction of higher education and premarital cohabitation experience.
In sum, the positive effects of premarital cohabitation on the timing of marriage and childbearing tend to be found in East Asia and the West except for a few cases. But the precise effect depends on survey years, countries and gender as well as dependent variables.

Marriage distance is the geographical aspect of marriage circle. Marriage circle means that one group of people marry specific persons from specific areas or with special socioeconomic characteristics. Both unbalance sex structure of population and female's superiority in marriage migration lead to a very serious male marriage squeeze under the background of unequal development between urban and rural in China. As female marriage migration, some rural males have to expand their marriage distance and they have to marry brides from the places much longer than before. Using 2010 Survey of Seven Provinces' Family Structure and Intergenerational Relation data, the change of marriage distance in rural from 1979-2010 is analyzed. The findings are as follows. First, marriage distance is enlarged, especially after 2005. Second, males' marriage distance is shorter than females' in general while both males' and females' marriage distance are expanded. Third, the experiences of labor migration and high education have positive relation with marriage distance expansion. Macro socioeconomic institution change including marriage institution change caused the transition of field, relation and capital for rural population marriage behavior, which in turn lead to marriage distance change at last.

The percentage of women who are never married from age thirty and above is increasing in Nigeria, yet, the fact of singlehood in its actual prevalence and determinants are virtually unknown through scholarly research. This study advances a marriage squeeze explanation to the rising prevalence of singlehood among women in Nigeria. An investigation of available census data shows severe imbalance between the numbers of marriageable men and women in Nigeria. Most Nigerian men marry younger women. Typical spousal age difference is between 5 and 10 years. Census data in 2006 shows that there were only 87 single males per 100 single females in age group M20-54/F15-49 for five-year spousal age gap. With ten-year spousal age difference, the severity of marriage squeeze was worse, there were 55 single men age 20-59 per 100 women age 10-49. The regions with more severe marriage squeeze also had higher prevalence of singlehood among women. With increasing penchant for monogamy even among Muslims, this excess supply of marriageable women will result in larger number of older single women and increased incidence of permanent singlehood among women. Reduction in the age gap between men and women at marriage would reduce the influence of marriage squeeze.

This study makes a comprehensive examination on the evolution and trend of male marriage squeeze in China since 1950 and employs the cohort analysis of the redundant boys born since 1983 to estimate the yearly total amount of surplus males in next 60 years. This work concludes that the phenomenon of Chinese marriage squeeze already existed since 1950, in 1960s of the twentieth Century China has experienced the most severe male marriage squeeze. Although in the twenty years between 1990 and 2010, there is no obvious marriage squeeze in China, 70% of surplus males in the future was born because of the increasingly high sex ratio at birth since 1983. These young boys and male babies will grow to be surplus males with a speed of 1.31 million each year in next 20 years. The total amount of excess males will reach up to 30 million in 2028, 5.6% of the total males at the age of married, and peak at 41.41million in 2043, 7.6% of the total males at the age of married. About in 2057 the total amount of excess males will decrease to less than 30 million which means that the total amount of excess males between 30 million and 40 million will last almost 30 years. If the sex ratio at birth in the future remains as high as that in 2012, the male marriage squeeze will be more serious.

So far the research in reproductive health and demographic behaviour is focused to individual level variables taking the wife or husband alone. However, ICPD conference in Cairo in 1994 has put forth demand to consider both men and women in its way to improve the health of women and children. Keeping this in view, there is ample research being carried out to study the effects of couple characteristics on health of the women and children. In India, the researches on understanding the relationship between couple characteristics and reproductive behaviour are scarce. The major objective of this paper is study the gap in couple characteristics and its impact on the fertility(children ever born).The present paper discusses three important couple characteristics namely age, education and caste differentials among the couples in India and their effects on fertility by using data from a large scale and national representative National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3, 2005-06). It is clear from the findings that age and educational gap among the couples have positive effect on their fertility implying that with the increase in age and education difference among couples, fertility also increases.