Skip to main navigationSkip to main content
The University of Southampton
Social Statistics and DemographyPart of Economic, Social & Political Science

Re-evaluating the link between marriage and mental well-being: how do early life conditions attenuate differences between cohabitation and marriage? Seminar

Time:
14:00
Date:
21 January 2016
Venue:
Building 58, Room 1067

For more information regarding this seminar, please telephone Centre for Population Change on 02380 592579 (Mel Morgan – Centre Administrator) or email cpc@soton.ac.uk .

Event details

A Centre for Population Change seminar

The decline in marriage and increase in cohabitation raises questions about whether marriage still provides benefits to well-being. Here we use the British Cohort Study 1970 (N=7203), a prospective survey following respondents to age 42, to examine whether partnerships in general, and marriage in particular, provide benefits to mental well-being in mid-life. We use propensity score matching to investigate whether childhood characteristics are a sufficient source of selection to eliminate differences in well-being between different partnership types. We find that matching on childhood characteristics does not eliminate advantages to living with a partner. However, the type of partnership does not matter; among those less likely to marry, marriage provides no benefits to well-being beyond cohabitation. The sources of childhood selection seem to differ by gender: matching on educational plans and scores tends to eliminate differences for women, while adolescent mental well-being eliminates many differences between cohabitation and marriage for men.

 

Speaker information

Marta Styrc, Centre for Population Change. University of Southampton

Privacy Settings