Prior studies have found that marriage benefits well-being, but cohabitation may provide similar benefits. An analysis of the British Cohort Study 1970, a prospective survey following respondents to age 42, examines whether partnerships in general, and marriage in particular, influence mental well-being in midlife. Propensity score matching indicates whether childhood characteristics are a suff...

It is widely acknowledged that age at marriage has a significant influence on fertility, particularly in countries where childbearing occurs within marriage. However, the complexities of this relationship are poorly understood, especially during fertility transitions. This paper investigates the complex relationship between marriage age and marital fertility by examining the initiation of child...

The present cross sectional study was undertaken among the Assamese Muslim women of Kamrup district, Assam, one of the North-Eastern states of India with a view to understand the differences in the age at first marriage of women and socioeconomic factors influencing it. The findings of the present study reveals that the age at marriage is negatively associated with the type of family i.e., the ...

This paper uses Australian data from the Negotiating the Lifecourse Project (1996/97) to investigate the impact of marriage on men’s and women’s earnings. We extend earlier earnings research and investigate whether the effect of marriage is constant for men and women at different points on the conditional earnings distribution by using robust and quantile regression techniques. We find no assoc...

This article examines the effect of AIDS-related mortality of the prime-age adult population on marriage behavior among women in Malawi. A rise in prime-age adult mortality increases risks associated with the search for a marriage partner in the marriage market. A possible behavioral change in the marriage market in response to an increase in prime-age adult mortality is to marry earlier to avo...

BACKGROUND Child marriage is a substantial barrier to social and economic development in India, and a primary concern for women's health. We assessed the prevalence of child marriage-ie, before 18 years of age-in young adult women in India, and the associations between child marriage and women's fertility and fertility-control outcomes. METHODS Data from the National Family Health Survey-3 (2...

This article documents the prevalence, duration, and marital outcomes of cohabiting unions in Japan. It then examines the correlates of cohabitation experiences and also describes differences in the family-formation trajectories of women who have and have not cohabited. Cohabitation has increased rapidly among recent cohorts of women, and cohabiting unions in Japan tend to be relatively short i...

Explanations for the positive association between education and marriage in the United States emphasize the economic and cultural attractiveness of having a college degree in the marriage market. However, educational attainment may also shape the opportunities that men and women have to meet other college-educated partners, particularly in contexts with significant educational stratification. W...

Marriage matching functions are used to study how marital patterns change when population supplies change. A behavioral marriage matching function with spillover effects is used to rationalize marriage and cohabitation behavior in contemporary Canada. The model non-parametrically identifies the systematic gains to marriage and cohabitation for a couple relative to remaining single. These gains ...