Does space/time dynamics influence the decision to cohabit? Regional patterns of cohabitation in Spain, 1990-2005

María José González, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Pau Baizán, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Amy Hsin, University of California, Los Angeles

Previous studies have ignored the many regional differences that interact with family formation patterns. The aim of this paper is to explore the recent spread of cohabitation in Spain taking into account individual and contextual effects at the regional level. First, we describe the diffusion of cohabitation across time and space since the beginning of the 1990’s. Second, we introduce a multi-level analysis to ascertain the influence of individual and regional variables on the decision to cohabit. This research is based on the micro-data of the Spanish Labour Force Survey (LFS). This is a continuous quarterly survey that targets households and provides large samples consisting of approximately 60.000 households and 200.000 individuals. This is one of the few dataset which provide statistically significant samples at regional and province level.