Two steps of union formation: first intimate relationships and first coresidential unions in the life courses of the German Cohorts 1971–1973 and 1981–1983

Abstract

The article explores the timing and spacing of two separate life course transitions constituting union formation. We explore the processes of entering the first intimate relationship and the first coresidential union in the life courses of two cohorts in Eastern and Western Germany. Referring to the common notion of postponement in the transition to adulthood, we address the question as to whether the cohort 1981–1983 started an intimate relationship and established a joint household later in life than the cohort 1971–1973. We additionally ask if such trends apply to both Eastern and Western German juveniles. Our analyses are based on the first wave of the German Family Panel (pairfam) and its supplemental project ‘Demographic Differences in Life Course Dynamics in Eastern and Western Germany’ (DemoDiff). The empirical results do not point at a prevalent trend of postponing the life course transitions under consideration. While both women and men born during 1981–1983 moved in together later than those born during 1971–1973, the male cohort 1981–1983 started the first intimate relationship earlier in both parts of the country. Multivariate analyses finally show that, for young men in both East and West, the propensity to enter a coresidential union has decreased over the cohorts.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 17 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.