Several studies have shown that a wife's strong (socio)economic position is associated with an increase in the risk of divorce. Less is known about such effects for cohabiting relationships. Using a unique and large-scale sample of administrative records from The Netherlands, we analyze the link between couples' income dynamics and union dissolution for married and cohabiting unions over a 10-year period. We find negative effects of household income on separation and positive effects of the woman's relative income, in line with earlier studies. The shape of the effect of the woman's relative income, however, depends on the type of union. Movements away from income equality toward a male-dominant pattern tend to increase the dissolution risk for cohabiting couples, whereas they reduce the dissolution risk for married couples. Movements away from income equality toward a female-dominant pattern (reverse specialization) increase the dissolution risks for both marriage and cohabitation. The findings suggest that equality is more protective for cohabitation, whereas specialization is more protective for marriage, although only when it fits a traditional pattern. Finally, we find that the stabilizing effects of income equality are more pronounced early in the marriage and that income equality also reduces the dissolution risk for same-sex couples.

IntroductionThe mobility behaviour of individuals and households has widespread consequences for societies (Cadwallader, 1992). It has a profound influence on the demographic and socioeconomic composition of neighbourhoods and the changes therein, including processes of segregation of low-income households and immigrants or minority ethnic groups. A major issue of debate is whether such processes result from voluntary actionöwhereby people move or stay when and where they wantöor from differentiated constraints on moving ö whereby some people move freely and others remain trapped in less desirable housing or neighbourhoods. It is therefore relevant to understand why some people move without having intended to do so and others remain despite having an initial intention to change residence. Insight into the factors that hamper the execution of mobility intentions might set a direction for urban housing policy that is, at least in the Netherlands, directed at achieving a more equal distribution of lower income households over space (Bolt et al, 2008). Since Rossi's classical work Why Families Move (1955), several studies have been published concerning the discrepancy between stated intentions to move (or to stay) and subsequent mobility behaviour. They have all shown that a substantial proportion of those who initially intend to move do not change residence (Kan, 1999;Moore, 1986).

"In the Netherlands, the social meaning of both marriage and cohabitation has changed. Cohabitation started as an alternative way of living, developed into a temporary phase before marriage, and finally became a strategy for moving into a union gradually.... This article addresses the question whether or not individual past and current life-course experiences become increasingly important in explaining the differentiation of entry into marriage across female birth cohorts, and yet become decreasingly important in explaining the differentiation of entry into cohabitation across female birth cohorts. This question is examined using a non-proportional hazard model. Empirical evidence supports this hypothesis strongly, in that both past determinants such as family size or religion and current life-course determinants such as work or education change in their impact on cohabitation and marriage across birth cohorts."

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