Ten Years of Marriage and Cohabitation Research in the Journal of Family and Economic Issues

Abstract

I reviewed the 36 marriage and cohabitation studies from the Journal of Family and Economic Issues articles published between 2010–2019. Nearly all of the studies used quantitative methods, and two-thirds of them used publicly available nationally-representative data. The studies fell into roughly five, unevenly sized groups: family structure, relationship quality, division of labor/employment, money management, and an “other” category. Suggestions for future research include applying some of the important questions within the articles to underrepresented groups, further examining the process of how finances and relationship quality interrelate and doing more applied and translational research.

The Social and Economic Impact of Covid-19 on Family Functioning and Well-Being: Where do we go from here?

“…Both couple and family well-being and relationships are impacted in a variety of ways because of financial stress (Dew, 2020 ; Kelley et al, 2020 ), and the pandemic has had a significant impact on finances and relationships. When the world essentially shut down in March 2020, families confronted many unknowns.…”

Less Than Fully Honest: Financial Deception in Emerging Adult Romantic Relationships

“…Additionally, we cannot make any claim of directionality between the variables in the current study. For instance, cultivating a flourishing romantic relationship may provide the motivation to communicate consistently about finances with a romantic partner (Dew, 2021)-and not the other way around.…”

“…One of the main aims of CFT is to describe the interrelated nature of couple relationships and finances. That is, research over the last decade (for review, see Dew, 2021; Glenn et al, 2019) has found that how couples navigate their finances may be connected to their relationship outcomes. Although scholars have not yet studied financial deception (i.e., defined in this study as when a romantic partner is less than fully honest about financial issues such as debt, purchases, and bills with their romantic partner; Yorgason et al, 2019) through the lens of CFT, we test if two key assumptions of CFT apply to financial deception in emerging adult romantic relationships.…”

Introduction to the Special Issue on Couples, Families, and Finance

“…First, from the nine studies, the majority of these were specific to samples from the US (in comparison, the study by Lim and Morgan was specific to Germany). As other authors have argued (Dew 2020), a focus on samples outside the US specific to finances is still needed. Moreover, and when examining finances for individuals across different countries and cultural backgrounds, we suggest that future researchers consider both culture and policy, given that shared beliefs, norms, and preferences among members of a social group often shape financial attitudes, financial knowledge, financial socialization, and financial decision making (Brown et al 2018;Gibby et al).…”

“…Fourth and finally, the majority of the studies in this special issue were specific to participants providing responses via self-report studies, participants retrospectively recalling instances of finances, and/or cross-sectional data. To these points, the majority of financial socialization studies include only retrospective self reports (Gudmunson et al 2016;LeBaron and Kelley, 2020), and many couple finance studies include only cross-sectional data (Dew 2020).…”