Education and cohabitation in Britain since the 1970s: an evolving relationship

Cohabitation is sometimes thought of as being inversely associated with education, but in Britain a more complex picture emerges. Educational group differences in cohabitation vary by age, by time period, by cohort, and by indicator used. Well educated women pioneered cohabitation in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. Over time, however, the less well educated caught up and have now overtaken the best educated at younger ages. But the principal difference by education currently is largely in timing—that is, the less well educated start cohabiting earlier than the best educated. In Britain, educational differentials in cohabitation appear to be reinstating long standing social patterns in the level and timing of marriage. Taking partnerships as a whole, social differentials have been fairly stable. Following a period of innovation and diffusion, there is much continuity with the past