Abstract
The article discusses the relationship between educational attainment and the existence of cohabitation in the Czech Republic. Cohabitation of unmarried partners is a timely topic given a constant growth of this form of relationship in the Czech society, which almost tripled between the years 1991 and 2011.
Based on data from the ISSP 2012 quantitative survey, the article seeks to demonstrate whether the educational attainment of an individual or his/her partner is associated with whether or not they cohabitate. Cohabitation is juxtaposed to marriage as well as to living-apart-together relationships, with partners living in different households.
Where methodologically feasible, the findings are verified on data from the following surveys: European Value Study 2008, Our Society 2012 and European Social Survey 2012. However, most of the analyses rely exclusively on the more robust dataset of ISSP 2012.
When split into the different categories of relationship and educational attainment, the other datasets analyzed did not provide sufficient samples for the necessary analyses. The article builds on the socioeconomic Rational Choice Theory (Becker) and normative theory (Inglehart, Van de Kaa).
RCT is primarily applied to the relationship between education and postponing marriage or cohabitation, while normative theory provides a perspective on the effect of education-related values on alternative relationship preferences or the decision never to marry. the analysis reveals that single (younger) higher-income respondents are more likely to cohabit because they can afford sharing a household with their partner. In contrast, divorced (older) higher-income respondents are more likely to live in single-member households.
This finding is primarily associated with respondent age, while education probably only takes effect in older age. In both groups, only the relationship with income, not education, was observed because divorced individuals are older than singles, on average.