Education and union formation: gender perspectives on attitudes and behaviour among young adults in Sweden

Eva Bernhardt, Stockholm University
Elizabeth Thomson, University of Wisconsin at Madison

A stable partnership with children continues to be an important life goal for most young adults. Finding a partner is the first step in a chain of interconnected life course events to reach this goal. Educational attainment is usually associated with delayed union formation, but net of enrolment it may be positively associated with union formation, especially with the choice of marriage over cohabitation. However, men's and women's education may be differentially related to the transition to a co residential union, since education offers social and economic opportunities that compete, especially for women, with the formation and maintenance of families. We will use data from a panel survey with young adults in Sweden to analyse educational effects on perceived advantages and disadvantages with partnered versus single life, and also use family-building attitudes and plans as fixed covariates in an analysis of union formation in between the two surveys in 1999 and 2003.