The Determinants of Marriage and Cohabitation Among Disadvantaged Americans: Research Findings and Needs
from Poverty Research Insights, Winter 2004
Prepared from “The Determinants of Marriage and Cohabitation Among Disadvantaged Americans: Two Themes from a Literature Review,” David J. Fein, Abt Associates Inc. September 2003.
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Federal agencies involved in initiatives to promote healthy marriage – such as the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), and the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) – have emphasized the need for a strong research-driven approach to policy development. These agencies have launched a variety of knowledge-building projects to respond to this need.
One such project was conducted by Abt Associates for ACF’s Office of Planning Research and Evaluation. The authors of the report, David J. Fein, Nancy R. Burstein, Greta G. Fein, and Laura D. Lindberg, first prepared a review report assessing the quantitative research literature on determinants of marriage and cohabitation among disadvantaged Americans. Second, they produced a guide to aspects of nine major national surveys useful in studying marriage and cohabitation determinants. Third, the authors produced eleven cross-cutting research recommendations.
Fein elaborated on two of the most important research recommendations—the need to study determinants for economically disadvantaged groups and for improved conceptual frameworks—in a paper for the conference, “Marriage and Family Formation Among Low-Income Couples: What do We Know From Research?”( This article summarizes Fein’s paper.
Determinants of unions among disadvantaged populations
The paper begins with several arguments for the importance of studying the determinants of marriage and cohabitation among disadvantaged persons.
Fein notes that, compared with the general population, poor people are at greater risk of single parenthood, with its attendant negative implications for child well-being and higher public spending. Secondly, descriptive analysis consistently shows that marriage and cohabitation experiences differ for people in different economic circumstances, with disadvantage associated with somewhat earlier marriage and negatively associated with relationship stability. Finally, the author believes that the findings on determinants for the general population may not apply to the poor – not because the determinants are inherently different, but rather because their effects are moderated by community, family, and personal contexts known to vary with socio-economic status.
Given the importance of work on determinants of marriage and cohabitation among disadvantaged populations, then, the author was surprised to find relatively little research focused specifically on such groups.
One common approach to these issues has been to study the effects of various influences within a particular population, using racial and demographic characteristics as proxies for economic disadvantage. There has been a substantial amount of research of this kind on racial and ethnic groups—especially African Americans. Fein identifies the Fragile Families research as an example; this work has provided valuable insights into influences on unions after an out-of-wedlock birth. The author notes, however, that while these are important groups to study, racial and demographic characteristics are not very good proxies for economic disadvantage.
Better than studies limited to particular populations are those that directly compare the effects of key determinants between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged groups. The author was able to identify several analyses of the effects of economic circumstances on marriage by poverty status, but he found comparatively little work on demographic, sociological or psychological influences by level of disadvantage.
Improved conceptual frameworks
The second research need Fein identifies is for improved conceptual frameworks to guide research on disadvantaged populations. The author notes that each of the four main disciplines contributing to this area of research – demography, economics, sociology, and psychology – has special insights to offer. But their stories individually only contribute a small degree to our understanding, and there remains a need for theories that incorporate a richer array of influences and interactions between influences.
Fein notes the immediate need to integrate research perspectives from psychology with those of the other disciplines. Until recently, psychologists paid little attention to how external factors influenced interaction, and thus were ill-equipped to explain variation in interaction across couples. For their part, demographers, economists, and sociologists have found a wide variety of external factors to be associated with union outcomes, but have not made as much progress in illuminating the mechanisms by which these correlations arise.
The emerging federal marriage initiatives, Fein writes, have created an urgent need to accelerate the integration of these different perspectives and methods. The government’s interest in relationship skills education, in particular, poses fundamental questions for basic and applied research on union determinants.
To what degree will external conditions related to poverty constrain couples’ abilities to acquire and apply new relationship skills? And to what degree do external forces compete with internal dynamics in determining overall relationship satisfaction and stability? Which external factors are important, and how do they affect the specific processes driving couples’ relationships?
The type of research required to answer those questions – work that explicitly investigates the linkages between external circumstances and specific relationship processes – may be especially pertinent to understanding how a variety of different aspects of socioeconomic disadvantage may affect relationship outcomes.
Fein cites the recent literature on stress and marital relationships as an important example of work that brings extrinsic and intrinsic factors together. Research has established that disadvantaged persons experience higher levels of stress, and that this elevated exposure explains a significant amount of the socio-economic variation in mental health outcomes. More recently, researchers have developed promising leads on how stress can affect couple and other family relationships. These studies have shown that financial pressures can increase depression and subsequent withdrawal and expressions of negativity in relationships. Recent research also is finding that stress may interfere with the cognitive processes and mental models required to form and sustain positive attributions about one’s partner.(
From a theoretical standpoint, this work on stress and relationships is notable for its attention to conceptualizing the key constructs; for its progress in identifying the mechanisms linking external events to relationship outcomes; and for its use of advanced techniques to address selection and endogeneity biases.
From a practical standpoint, the stress literature already also has important implications. With regard to financial incentives for marriage, the findings serve as a useful reminder that rational analysis is not necessarily the predominant process governing relationships. Instead, the findings encourage us to view the cognitive faculties needed for positive attributions and behavior as (1) varyingly available and (2) competing with emotional and physiological reactions to stress. If resources matter because they reduce stresses interfering with positive interaction, only strategies that equip couples to withstand and address external stresses will prove effective in boosting marriage.
The author notes that the concept of stress is just one of many important external factors requiring investigation. Other potentially significant external circumstances include education; family-of-origin experiences; local environments; and socially-derived norms, values, and attitudes about relationships – gender role expectations, for example.
Optimism for research breakthroughs in the next decade
Fein concludes that there is good reason to expect significant research advances over the next decade. Emerging federal marriage initiatives are stimulating just the kind of interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration needed to integrate and apply different theories to understudied populations. In addition, the federal agencies involved have demonstrated a strong commitment to creating a data infrastructure for research on couples and families.
FOOTNOTES
1 www.abtassociates.com/reports/litrev_abt.pdf.
2 www.abtassociates.com/reports/dataguide_abt.pdf.
3 www.npc.umich.edu/news/events/marriageagenda.
4 e.g. Carlson et al., 2002.
5 e.g. McLaughlin and Lichter, 1997.
6 Turner et al., 1995.
7 Conger et al. 1999 and 2002.
8 Neff and Karney, 2003; Tessor and Beach, 1998.
