Intentions to Live Together Among Couples Living Apart: Differences by Age and Gender

One of the central questions about LAT (living apart together) is whether these partnerships are short-term arrangements due to temporary constraints, and should be viewed as part of courtship towards cohabitation and marriage, or whether they replace cohabitation and marriage as a long-term arrangement. The current study addresses this question and examines intentions to live together among people living apart by age and gender. This study uses Generations and Gender Study (GGS) data for eleven European countries. The findings reveal an interesting interaction of age and gender. More specifically, younger women have higher intentions to live together than younger men, but older women have lower intentions than older men. These gender differences remain significant also in the multivariate analyses. These findings suggest that older women in LAT may be undoing gender to a greater extent than younger women, who still intend to live in a more traditional (and probably gendered) arrangement of cohabitation and possibly marriage. Having resident children reduces intentions to live together among people younger than age 50, but the effect does not differ by gender. The effect of non-resident children on intentions to live together is statistically non-significant.