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Economic Well-being and Cohabitation: Another Nonmetro Disadvantage?

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Abstract

Our study examines residential variability in the prevalence of cohabiting households, the extent to which children are present, characteristics of the household head, and multiple indicators of economic well-being. Despite a lower prevalence of cohabiting households in nonmetropolitan compared to other areas, a larger proportion contain children. For all measures considered, economic well-being is lowest for cohabiting households with children in nonmetropolitan areas, and compared to their metro counterparts a larger proportion receive all forms of public assistance. The higher likelihood of poverty among nonmetropolitan cohabiting households with children is not explained by the characteristics of the household heads in multivariate models predicting household poverty. Cohabitation clearly has different family and economic implications in nonmetropolitan than in other residential areas.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support provided by Experiment Station Projects 3692, 3644 and 3865 of the College of Agricultural Sciences, and by Population Center Grant funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Population Research Institute (R24 HD 41025-01), The Pennsylvania State University. The authors would like to thank Alan Booth and Daniel Lichter for their feedback on an earlier draft, and Don Gensimore for his programming assistance.

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  1. The Pennsylvania State University, 111a Armsby Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Anastasia R. Snyder

  2. The Pennsylvania State University, 110a Armsby Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Diane K. McLaughlin

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  1. Anastasia R. Snyder
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  2. Diane K. McLaughlin
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Correspondence to Anastasia R. Snyder.

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Snyder, A.R., McLaughlin, D.K. Economic Well-being and Cohabitation: Another Nonmetro Disadvantage?. J Fam Econ Iss 27, 562–582 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-006-9019-6

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