Cohabitation and partnership context at the time of first birth in Romania

Nina B. Stanciu, Ministry of Public Finance, Romania

In many western European nations there have been dramatic recent rises in unmarried cohabitation and having children outside marriage. The main question of this study is : Are this rises in unmarried cohabitation and having children outside of marriage starting to be a new phenomenon in Romania? In what stage are we? Also, the aim of this study is to find out what sub-groups of the population are more prone to cohabitation than others. The next question is : Is it reasonable to assume that younger generations are more prone to cohabit than older generations? Our analysis includes an examination of type of first partnership, age at first partnership, duration of cohabiting unions, characteristics of cohabitants, and the partnership context within which first child is born. We also want to examine the partnership context of first birth.