The Influence of School Enrollment and Accumulation on Cohabitation and Marriage in Early Adulthood

TLDR

The study investigates how education influences cohabitation and marriage by developing a theoretical framework and testing hypotheses about school enrollment and accumulation. The framework links education to union formation through role incompatibility, opportunity costs of truncating schooling, and skill accumulation, and the authors test it with event‑history data from a U.S. panel of young adults. Results show that school enrollment lowers overall union formation, especially marriage, while school accumulation raises marriage rates and reduces cohabitation, indicating that less educated individuals substitute cohabitation for marriage and more educated individuals are more likely to marry.

Abstract

We explore the influence of education on cohabitation and marriage formulating a theoretical framework that identifies ways in which the multiple dimensions of education influence both cohabitation and marriage. Our theoretical framework links education and union formation through the incompatibility of educational and marital and cohabiting roles the opportunity costs of truncating education and the accumulation of skills knowledge and credentials gained from school attendance. Using this theoretical framework we formulate hypotheses about the influence of school enrollment and accumulation on marriage and cohabitation....We evaluate our hypotheses using event-history data from a panel study of young [U.S.] Adults. Results indicate that school enrollment decreases the rate of union formation and has greater effects on marriage than on cohabitation. School accumulation increases marriage rates and decreases cohabitation--a pattern suggesting that less educated individuals tend to substitute cohabitation for marriage while those with greater school accumulation are more likely to marry. (EXCERPT)