Understanding the Marriage–Cohabitation Gap in Income Pooling: Evidence from 29 European Countries

Abstract

Pooling all incomes was long seen as the norm in male-breadwinner marriages, but in a time of dual-earner families, cohabitation, and divorce, the underpinnings of this model are eroding. What consequences does this have for income pooling? We compare ca. 130,000 married and cohabiting couples from 29 European countries in the 2010 European Union Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) via random effects logit models. We show that cohabiting couples are generally more likely than married couples to keep at least some income separately, the so-called cohabitation gap. Roughly a fifth of this gap we can attribute to compositional differences between married and cohabiting couples. Further, the cohabiting group is heterogeneous and smaller when comparing only couples with children or only couples with a long relationship duration. Lastly, we show that there is substantial variation in the size of the cohabitation gap across countries. The size of this gap varies with the country-specific cohabitation rate, divorce rate, and female labor force participation rate. While there is considerable heterogeneity among cohabiting couples, married and cohabiting couples remain distinct in their resource-sharing behavior. Income pooling does not become more comparable when cohabitation, marital instability, and women’s economic independence become more widespread in the broader society. Our study reconciles disparate findings of previous cross-national research on the cohabitation gap.

Nation-level Gender Inequality and Couples' Income Arrangements

“…It is also possible that couples who marry in more egalitarian countries may incorporate rhetoric of equal sharing but the organization of money may still fail to live up to expressions of equality in reality (Addo & Sassler, 2010;Bisdee, Daly, & Price, 2013;Burgoyne, 1990;Burgoyne & Lewis, 1994;Burgoyne & Morison, 1997;Kenney, 2006). Thus, those who choose to cohabit indefinitely may have a stronger commitment to gender equality (Blakemore, Lawton, & Vartanian, 2005;Präg et al, 2019). Tables Table 1.…”

“…The way money is organized in families is shaped by women's participation in the labor market (Hobson, 1990;Präg et al, 2019), and by institutional and cultural forces which vary widely between countries (Roman & Vogler, 1999;Yodanis & Lauer, 2007a, 2007b. There are also considerable country-level differences in the degree to which money is converted into other resources within families (Aassve, Fuochi, & Mencarini, 2014;Ludwig-Mayerhofer, Allmendinger, Hirseland, & Schneider, 2011).…”

“…Yet, existing research shows that married couples are more likely than cohabitors to pool money into a shared family pot across various contexts (Hamplová & Le Bourdais, 2009;Hamplová et al, 2014;Heimdal & Houseknecht, 2003;Hiekel et al, 2014;Kenney, 2004Kenney, , 2006Lyngstad, Noack, & Tufte, 2011;Vogler, Brockmann, & Wiggins, 2006). Across welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen, 1999), cohabiting couples tend to keep their money separate more often than married couples (Hamplová & Le Bourdais, 2009;Präg et al, 2019). Some countries, such as Norway, have shifted tax policies and social security systems towards treating cohabitors more like married couples (Noack, 2001), but even there distinctions remain, as cohabiting couples in Norway do not have a legal duty to provide for one another as married couples do (Lyngstad et al, 2011).…”

“…Parent. To address some selectivity issues between cohabitors and married couples, we considered presence of children an indicator of investment in the relationship (Barlow, 2008;Kenney, 2004;Präg et al, 2019). Respondents were coded as being a parent if they indicated they had any children under age 18 living in their household.…”

“…Pooling and managing resources together may be gender egalitarian or inegalitarian, depending on the underlying power balance within the couple and in the wider society (Hu, 2019;Tichenor, 1999;Treas, 1993;Vogler, 1998;Vogler & Pahl, 1994). Existing research tends to emphasize integration differences between cohabiting and married couples', the "cohabitation-marriage gap" (Hamplová & Le Bourdais, 2009;Hamplová, Le Bourdais, & Lapierre-Adamcyk, 2014;Hiekel, Liefbroer, & Poortman, 2014;Präg, Begall, & Treas, 2019); or attend to variation in the management of money among married couples (Lauer and Yodanis 2011; Lauer 2007a, 2007b). A multi-dimensional approach which accounts for issues of both access to and control over money is important to understanding cross-national variation in the gender revolution and family dynamics (Altintas & Sullivan, 2016;Goldscheider, Bernhardt, & Lappegård, 2015).…”