Singularization of living arrangements. Partnership behaviour in postmodern times

Gert Hullen, Federal Institute for Population Research, Germany

The last decades of population development in industrialized countries are marked by postponed marriages, if ever, and the shortening of marriage duration by high divorce rates. Living in non-marital unions is becoming more and more an alternative living arrangement - not only the initiating phase of the traditional legal marriage. This development will be described on the base of retrospective biographies. It will be discussed if consensual unions (within a common household or even as LAT "living apart together") are a result of the need for flexible, volatile life courses in postmodern times. The empirical base will be the GGS (Generations and Gender Survey), performed 2005 in Germany with a sample of 10,000 persons aged 18 to 79 years.