How Do Cohabiting Couples With Children Spend Their Money?

Thomas DeLeire () and Ariel Kalil

No 204, Working Papers from Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago

Abstract: Cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent living arrangement in the United States. Although the effects of living in a cohabiting arrangement on child well-being are not fully understood, the literature on children growing up in cohabiting families suggests that they have poorer developmental outcomes than do those growing up in married-parent families or in single-parent families. We use the Consumer Expenditure Survey to see if cohabiting couples with children spend their income on a different set of goods (i.e., have a different distribution of expenditure) than either married parents or single parents. Using a variety of analytical methods, we find that cohabiting couples spend a substantially larger share of their total expenditure on alcohol and tobacco than do either married-parent families or single parents. Cohabiting couples with children also spend less on health care and less on education than do married parents.

Keywords: cohabitation; children; income expenditure; money (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-04
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:har:wpaper:0204

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