Sociology

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    Rethinking marriage metabolism: The declining frequency of marital events in the United States
    (Population Research and Policy Review, 2023) Cohen, Philip N.
    Previous research has used the concept of marriage metabolism to represent churning in the marriage system, but the measurements used to date have been inadequate. This paper addresses changes in the incidence of marital events in the United States from 2008 to 2021. I offer a measure, the Total Rate of Marital Events (TRME), of the projected lifetime experience of marital transitions (marriage, divorce, and widowhood) for life table cohorts. I find that the TRME declined steeply over this relatively short period: 22% for men and 19% for women. All three components declined in every age group below 90. The decline in divorce was most pronounced. More accurately than the term "retreat from marriage," I describe the slowing churn of the marriage system as reflecting the diminished social presence of marriage in daily life. Rather than a retreat, this coincides with the increasingly selective status of married life. A higher status marriage system is a smaller, slower, and more stable marriage system.
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    Growing Uncertainty in Marriage Expectations among U.S. Youth
    (Socius, 2024-03-26) Cohen, Philip N.; Pepin, Joanna R.
    Marriage rates are falling in the United States. The authors ask whether today's young adults are likely to continue this trend. Using Monitoring the Future Public-Use Cross-Sectional Datasets (1976-2022), this visualization presents U.S. 12th graders' marriage expectations. It shows declining optimism that they will be "very good" spouses and declining expectations that they will eventually marry. Both trends are prominent in the last 10 years of the survey, and both are more dramatic among young women than among young men. If these trends hold, it may foretell further declines in marriage rates in the coming years.
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    Local violence and transitions to marriage and cohabitation in Mexico
    (Wiley, 2022-10-20) Caudillo, Mónica L.; Lee, Jaein
    Objective To assess whether local violence is associated with the timing and type of women's first union formation. Background Local violence may cause disruptions to marriage markets and psychological and behavioral changes that may affect union formation patterns. Method The authors exploited the variation in homicide rates caused by a shift in national drug-enforcement policy in Mexico in December 2006. Competing-risks Cox models and union histories from a nationally representative survey of women (N = 33,292) were used to assess whether a recent increase in violence was associated with the timing of the first union transition, which could be either marriage or cohabitation. Analyses were conducted separately by education level. Results A recent increase in the local homicide rate was associated with delayed first marriage formation for less educated women. Supplementary analyses suggested that a decrease in the number of employed men per women, as well as reduced social interaction due to fear of victimization could be plausible causal mechanisms. No statistically significant associations were found between a recent increase in violence and transitions to first cohabitation for the less educated, or with any first union transition for the moderately and more educated. Conclusion Among less educated women, a recent increase in violence was associated with a delayed entrance into marriage as a first union transition. Implications By increasing their barriers to marriage, local violence may contribute to the accumulation of disadvantage among disadvantaged women and families.
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    Institutional Involvement and the Mental Health Effects of Perceived Neighborhood Disorder in Old Age: The Role of Personal and Divine Control
    (2007-04-23) Bierman, Alex; Milkie, Melissa A.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Previous research has shown that perceptions of neighborhood disorder are related to increased levels of psychological distress. Neighborhood disorder may be especially salient for older adults because the transitions associated with aging heighten the salience of the neighborhood as an arena for social interaction. A stress-process perspective suggests that the effects of neighborhood disorder on mental health may be indirect, and mediated through harm in elders' self-concepts, but also that the structural arrangements in which individuals are embedded may protect elder's mental health by protecting the self. I add to this perspective by focusing on engagement in family and religious institutions as primary indications of enmeshment in the structural arrangements of society. Using a longitudinal study of older adults, I examine whether marriage prevents the mental health effects of perceived neighborhood disorder by protecting mastery, and whether attendance at religious services and prayer protect elders' mental health by preventing loss of a second type of perceived control, sense of divine control. Results show that marriage prevents the effects of neighborhood disorder on depression and anger by preventing a loss of mastery. Further, losses in mastery strengthen the effects of neighborhood disorder on mental health, but only for women and the less educated. Neighborhood disorder is also related to loss of sense of divine control, but only for elders with greater levels of education, and religious involvement helps prevent these effects. However, this moderation provides no mental health benefits, and change in sense of divine control does not alter the relationship between neighborhood disorder and mental health. A primary contribution of this dissertation is that it places the effects of perceived neighborhood disorder in a larger structural context by demonstrating that they are contingent on engagement in the social structures which pattern human behavior and sustain the structure of society.
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    EMPLOYMENT AND MARRIAGE: PATHWAYS OFF OF WELFARE?
    (2005-02-01) Roberts, Tracy Elizabeth; Martin, Steven P; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Does the way women exit welfare affect their probability of returning to welfare? Using data drawn from the 1979 - 2000 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, I examine the effect of marital and employment transitions on recidivism rates. I find that women who combine employment and marriage after exiting welfare, in that order, have significantly lower risks of recidivism than other women. Women who marry but do not enter employment have higher recidivism rates than women who combine employment and marriage, but they are less likely to return to welfare than women who are only employed. The data suggest that simply encouraging marriage or women's employment may not reduce welfare recidivism. The best policy strategy to reduce welfare dependence and encourage healthy marriages may be to strengthen work support programs and improve the circumstances of employment (and opportunities for strong marriages) for low-income men and women.