The stability of early partnerships: what is the influence of labor market insecurity on union separation for younger cohorts in Germany?

Cordula D. Zabel, Institute for Employment Research (IAB)
Valerie Heintz-Martin, German Youth Institute

In early labor market careers, young people often work in non-standard and insecure types of jobs. We are interested to see how these types of employment insecurities impact partnership stability. Our focus is on non-cohabiting partnerships. While early partnerships often are non-cohabiting partnerships, little is known about the stability of these partnerships, and what factors are important for their transformation into cohabiting unions. We make use of the opportunity to incorporate information on such non-cohabiting partnerships offered by PAIRFAM, a recent German panel and retrospective survey focusing on relationship dynamics for three young cohorts. We analyze the impact of labor market status and type of employment on partnership exit rates, applying event-history analysis. We examine whether findings differ for cohabiting and non-cohabiting unions. We treat exits from non-cohabiting unions and transitions from non-cohabiting to cohabiting unions as competing risks.