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Home and Where the Heart Is: Marriage Timing and Joint Home Purchase

Où se trouve le cœur, là est la maison: Calendrier du mariage et achat conjoint d’un logement

European Journal of Population / Revue européenne de Démographie volume 28, pages 65–89 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

This article evaluates the relationship between the timing of marriage and the purchase of a jointly owned home among Swedish cohabiting couples. Data for this analysis come from the Swedish Housing and Life Course Cohort Study (N = 1,596 couples; 2,006 cohabiting spells). The author develops models to proxy for simultaneity and intentions and test hypotheses about positive and negative and long- and short-run relationships between the two life-course events. The author uses a novel modeling approach, allowing for differences in the risk before, concurrently and after the conditioning event. Results indicate a positive relationship between marriage and joint home purchase and suggest the possibility of an ordering of events: For some couples, formalizing their union through marriage may be a prerequisite for a joint home purchase.

Résumé

Cet article étudie la relation entre le calendrier du mariage et l’achat conjoint d’un logement chez les couples suédois cohabitants à partir des données de l’étude de cohorte suédoise sur les ménages et les parcours de vie (N = 1 596 couples; 2 006 périodes de cohabitation). L’auteur développe des modèles pour appréhender la simultanéité et les intentions et pour tester des hypothèses relatives aux relations positives/négatives, court-terme/long-terme entre les deux événements. Une approche nouvelle permet de tenir compte des différences de risque avant, pendant et après l’événement conditionnant. Les résultats indiquent une relation positive entre le mariage et l’achat conjoint d’un logement et la possibilité d’un ordre chronologique dans la survenue des événements : pour certains couples, formaliser leur union par un mariage peut être une condition préalable à l’achat conjoint d’un logement.

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Notes

  1. See Appendix 1 for marriage rates of cohabiting and non-cohabiting couples in the HOLK data.

  2. Interacting tenure and contract holder variables did not change the pattern of association, nor did it improve model fit.

  3. These models predict joint home purchase. Therefore, the independent variable on ownership characterizes only those homes that are owned by the man or the woman; similarly, jointness characterizes only rental (first- or second-hand) properties.

  4. I present only results from the full model; results from intermediate models available on request.

  5. I present only results from the full model; results from intermediate models available on request.

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Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of the article and some analyses have been presented and benefited from discussions at meetings of the European Association of Population Studies (2010) and the Population Association of America (2010), the Nordic Demographic Symposium (2010), European Science Foundation Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (2) Advances in Family and Fertility Research Workshop (2009), the University of Wisconsin–Madison Center for Demography and Ecology, the Stockholm University Demography Unit and Linnaeus Center for Social Policy and Family Dynamics in Europe and the Research Department of Statistics Norway. I thank Elizabeth Thomson, Gunnar Andersson, Clara Mulder, Jan Hoem and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Support for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Demography and Ecology (Center Grant R24 HD047873). I also thank Sara Ström and the Swedish Institute for Futures Studies for access to and documentation of the Swedish Life Course and Cohort Study.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Jennifer A. Holland

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Correspondence to Jennifer A. Holland.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 6.

Table 6 Full survey sample
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Appendix 2

See Table 7.

Table 7 Analytic sample
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Holland, J.A. Home and Where the Heart Is: Marriage Timing and Joint Home Purchase. Eur J Population 28, 65–89 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-011-9242-1

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