Cross-National Differences in Income Pooling among Married and Cohabiting Couples

Objective: To examine cross-national differences in income pooling by relationship type. Background: In most countries, there is a “cohabitation gap” with cohabiting couples less likely to pool their incomes and act as a single economic unit compared to married couples. There is very little cross-national research comparing income management patterns of married and cohabiting couples. Despite large cross-national variation in cohabitation prevalence, the limited research on income management finds surprisingly little variation in the “cohabitation gap.” Using a larger range of countries than used in previous studies, income management of married and cohabiting couples was compared to test whether the cohabitation gap can be explained by the cohabitation prevalence in a country, the degree to which cohabitation is related to economic disadvantage or to structural factors such as taxation. Method: Multilevel multinomial regression is used to study income pooling across 32 countries from the 2012 International Social Survey Programme. Results: The size of the cohabitation gap does vary across countries. In some countries, cohabiting and married couples act very similarly in terms of their income organization, whereas in others there is a large difference in the behavior of couples. There is little evidence that this is related to the prevalence of cohabitation; however, economic constraints, as well as taxation systems, are associated with the cross-national variation in the cohabitation gap. Conclusion: Differences in the cohabitation gap reflect the context and policies of the countries within which couples live rather than ideological expectations surrounding relationship choice.