How Well Can We Track Cohabitation Using the SIPP? A Consideration of Direct and Inferred Measures

Cohabitation is an alternative to marriage and to living independently for an increasing number of Americans. Still, research that explores links between living arrangements and economic behavior is limited by a lack of data that explicitly identify cohabiting couples. To aid researchers in using th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inDemography Vol. 39; no. 3; pp. 455 - 465
Main Authors Baughman, Reagan, Dickert-Conlin, Stacy, Houser, Scott
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Population Association of America 01.08.2002
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Adult
Age
Age groups
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Censuses
Cohabitation
Cohabiting couples
Couples
Data Collection
Demographics
Demography
Economic behaviour
Family Characteristics
Family income
Female
Households
Humans
Living arrangements
Male
Marital Status - statistics & numerical data
Marriage
Measurement
Measures (Instruments)
Methodological Problems
Methodology (Data Analysis)
Middle Aged
National surveys
Population
Poverty
Public assistance programs
Regression Analysis
Single status
Spouses - classification
Spouses - statistics & numerical data
Studies
Surveys
Tax reform
United States
United States of America
USA
Wellbeing
United States
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Summary:Cohabitation is an alternative to marriage and to living independently for an increasing number of Americans. Still, research that explores links between living arrangements and economic behavior is limited by a lack of data that explicitly identify cohabiting couples. To aid researchers in using the Survey of Income and Program Participation's (SIPP) rich data to explore cohabitation issues, we consider direct and inferred measures of cohabitation. We find, first, that the use of inferred definitions (relative to direct measures) in the SIPP is likely to yield higher cohabitation rates in the United States by incorrectly coding roommates as cohabitors. Second, the SIPP (whether by direct or inferred measures) counts a significantly larger number of cohabiting couples than the widely used Current Population Survey (CPS). Third, spells of cohabitation occur less frequently and last longer when a direct measure of cohabitation is used than when either of the two inferred measures of cohabitation is used; ours is the first article to reveal this result.
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ISSN:0070-3370
1533-7790
DOI:10.1353/dem.2002.0024