Expected years ever married

Ryohei Mogi and Vladimir Canudas-Romo
Additional contact information
Ryohei Mogi: Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Vladimir Canudas-Romo: Australian National University

Demographic Research, 2018, vol. 38, issue 47, 1423-1456

Abstract: Background: In the second half of the 20th century, remarkable marriage changes were seen: a great proportion of never married population, high average age at first marriage, and large variance in first marriage timing. Although it is theoretically possible to separate these three elements, disentangling them analytically remains a challenge. Objective: This study’s goal is to answer the following questions: Which of the three effects, nonmarriage, delayed marriage, or expansion, has the most impact on nuptiality changes? How does the most influential factor differ by time periods, birth cohorts, and countries? Methods: To quantify nuptiality changes over time, we define the measure ‘expected years ever married’ (EYEM). We illustrate the use of EYEM, looking at time trends in 15 countries (six countries for cohort analysis) and decompose these trends into three components: scale (the changes in the proportion of never married – nonmarriage), location (the changes in timing of first marriage – delayed marriage), and variance (the changes in the standard deviation of first marriage age – expansion). We used population counts by sex, age, and marital status from national statistical offices and the United Nations database. Results: Results show that delayed marriage is the most influential factor on period EYEM’s changes, while nonmarriage has recently begun to contribute to the change in North and West Europe and Canada. Period and cohort analysis complement each other. Conclusions: This study introduces a new index of nuptiality and decomposes its change into the contribution of three components: scale, location, and variance. The decomposition steps presented here offer an open possibility for more elaborate parametric marriage models.

Keywords: marriage; nonmarriage; nuptiality trends; decomposition; life years lost; Coale-McNeil model; delayed marriage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol38/47/38-47.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:demres:v:38:y:2018:i:47

DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2018.38.47

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Demographic Research from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Editorial Office ().