Title: Home and Where the Heart Is: Marriage Timing and Joint Home Purchase
Authors: Jennifer A. Holland
Journal: European Journal of Population/Revue européenne de Démographie, 28(1), 65-89.
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.
Also available via PubMed Central.
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.
Jennifer A. Holland 