The type and duration of family unions and income sharing: The implications for women's economic well-being

There is a growing tendency to see cohabitation as an equivalent alternative to marriage, and this article investigates how different these two unions are for a woman's financial satisfaction and income sharing in Denmark, France and Great Britain. The analysis suggests that a woman's financial satisfaction decreases with cohabitation as opposed to marriage due perhaps to the lack of income pooling of cohabiters. The paper however finds substantial heterogeneity among married couples; the difference between marriage and cohabitation is not only a result of the legal protection obtained by the marriage contract but is better explained by the level of relationship investment in marriage in terms of its duration. The systematic comparison of the three institutional frameworks points out that Denmark, as the country where marriage and cohabitation are most equated by law, is surprisingly the country where the relative difference between marriage and cohabitation for a woman's financial satisfaction is the greatest. No relative variation in results is observed between Great Britain and France.

► We examine income pooling and a woman's financial satisfaction in marriage and cohabitation.
► A woman's financial satisfaction decreases with cohabitation and increases the longer the marriage lasts.
► A woman's income share is a better predictor of financial satisfaction of cohabiting women than married ones.
► The variation between countries is perhaps partly due to the differences in legislation on cohabitation.