The Heterogenous Geography of American Relationships

• In Event: 267 - Section on Sociology of Population Paper Session. Demography and Inequality

Abstract

Cohabitation rates and the age at marriage vary greatly and significantly by geography in America, with cohabitation concentrated in urban areas and the coasts, and early marriage concentrated in rural areas and the interior. This paper seeks to explain why this is the case, using both a-spatial and spatial hierarchical models and the ACS microsample. It finds that while individual and place-level economic, social and demographic characteristics explain a great deal of the geographic variation in the relationship choices people make, they do not explain it all, with significant spatial autocorrelation remaining for both. Two potential theoretical explanations are posited to explain the remaining variation: spatially dependent processes of relationship formation, and differing cultural outlooks towards relationship choices.

Author

• Thomas Lyttelton