Living in precarious partnerships: Understanding how young men’s and women’s economic precariousness contribute to outcomes of first cohabitation
: Palumbo, Lydia; Berrington, Ann; Eibich, Peter
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
: 2025
: Population Studies
: 1
: 29
: 0032-4728
: 1477-4747
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2024.2438692
: https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2024.2438692
: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/485085190
In the UK, cohabitation has become the normative type of first co-residential partnership. While some couples go on to marry, others increasingly continue to cohabit or break up. One possible explanation is the rise in young people’s economic precariousness. However, few studies have analysed this hypothesis empirically for the UK. By analysing data on cohabiting couple dyads from 1991 to 2019, we explore how economic precariousness (measured by four traits: employment, labour income, savings, and financial perceptions) relates to marriage and to cohabitation dissolution. The types of precarious traits seen in couples, alongside their distribution between partners, are crucial for understanding socio-economic differences in cohabitation outcomes. Marriage is less likely among couples where the man is jobless or has no savings, suggesting that marriage is a financially committed relationship, more reliant on men’s resources. Couples where women hold worse financial perceptions than men are most likely to separate, highlighting the importance of subjective measures.
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This work was started as part of Lydia Palumbo’s doctoral project jointly funded by the Max Planck Institute of Demographic Research and the School of Social, Economic and Political Sciences at the University of Southampton. Lydia Palumbo also acknowledges the FLUX Consortium—funded by the Strategic Research Council (SRC) within the Academy of Finland (decision number: 345,130)—for allowing its continuation. Ann Berrington acknowledges the funding by the ESRC Connecting Generations Centre, grant number ES/W002116/1.