Cohabitation in China: Trends and Determinants

Although the role and meaning of cohabitation in family systems vary substantially across countries and subgroups, cohabitation has become more prevalent globally in recent decades. In Western countries it has come to resemble marriage (Bumpass 1990; Cherlin 2004; Kiernan 2001; Lesthaeghe 1995; van de Kaa 1987). Cohabitation in China, however, has seldom been studied—mainly owing to the lack of suitable data. The topic stands in contrast to the many well-documented family changes China has experienced since the 1970s, including a sharp decline in fertility and a rise in age at first marriage (Xie 2011; Yu and Xie 2013). In this study, we make use of cohabitation data collected in the 2010 and 2012 China Family Panel Studies, a nationally representative longitudinal household survey. Our results provide the first national estimates of the prevalence and determinants of cohabitation in China, highlighting the roles of ideational and institutional changes. We provide background on the place of cohabitation within wider demographic transitions over the past several decades, describe the trends and levels of cohabitation across successive birth cohorts in China, and estimate effects of demographic and socioeconomic determinants on cohabitation in China.