Shacking up: the pre-modern origins of contemporary cohabitation practices.

Inés Gil Torras, University of Bologna

This paper aims to provide a cultural explanation for the rise of cohabitation of the last decades in Europe. I approach this phenomenon from the field of historical legacies of pre-industrial family systems. Emmanuel Todd (1996) provided a clear classification of historical family systems in Europe and a theory to explain why these systems are linked to the different persistent ideologies in different European regions. By using his data and theory I provide an empirical study that connects statistically the features of the pre-industrial family systems with current levels of cohabitation. I count with data for 14 European countries at sub national level, Nuts3 (province), for the census of 2001 and 2011, and the waves 3 and 9 of the European Social Survey (at levels Nuts 1, 2 and 3), I control for GDP and tertiary education, as well as Country F.I. I test first for the cross-sectional correlations between historical family and the current levels of cohabitation; and second for the patterns of change, using survival analysis to test for the moment of rise of this practice for each family type. Results remain significant for both the census and the ESS samples, showing that historical family structure is a good predictor of the practice of cohabitation today, and also on the patterns of adoption of this practice. Contrary to the expectations, the inheritance systems seem to be more salient than the generational composition of the household. The areas of Europe with absolute nuclear historical family types were the fist ones adopting this practice and are the ones with higher levels of cohabitation. To this group follows the areas with an Stem historical family system (extended inegalitarian). Those oppose with the Nuclear Egalitarian and Communitarian family systems, being the ones adopting this practice the latest.

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 Presented in Session 174. Interpretation and Social Order