An article examined why people lived 'apart together'. It said that the category contained different sorts of relationship, with different needs and desires. Although cohabitation remained the goal for most, living apart together allowed people flexibility and room to manoeuvre in adapting couple intimacy to the demands of contemporary life.
Source: Simon Duncan, Julia Carter, Miranda Phillips, Sasha Roseneil, and Mariya Stoilova, 'Why do people live apart together?', Families, Relationships and Societies, Volume 2 Number 3
Links: Abstract
Date: 2013-Nov
A report examined the extent to which differences in parental characteristics explain differences in cognitive and socio-emotional development between children at older ages.
Source: Claire Crawford, Alissa Goodman, and Ellen Greaves, Cohabitation, Marriage, Relationship Stability and Child Outcomes: Final report, Institute for Fiscal Studies
Links: Report | IFS comment | Nuffield press release
Date: 2013-Oct
A private member's Bill was published that was designed to provide certain protections for people who live together as a couple or who have lived together as a couple; and to make provision about the property of deceased persons who are survived by a cohabitant.
Source: Cohabitation Rights Bill [HL], Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, TSO
Links: Bill
Date: 2013-Oct
A report examined the impact of independent taxation 25 years after its introduction. It said that the benefits of independent taxation had been 'greatly undermined' by the failure to include transferable allowances, which had resulted in families bearing a greater share of the income burden than before the changes. This problem had been compounded by recent changes to child benefit: these pushed some one-earner couple families into the lower half of the income distribution, whereas single people or two-earner families on the same income were unaffected. The new universal credit would have the benefit of recognizing a second parent, reducing the 'couple penalty': but it would not compensate much better than tax credits for the failure of the income tax system to take account of marriage or family responsibilities.
Source: Don Draper and Leonard Beighton, Independent Taxation – 25 years on: Does it meet today s needs?, CARE
Links: Report | CARE press release
Date: 2013-Sep
An article said that there was a complex relationship between education and cohabitation patterns. Educational group differences in cohabitation varied by age, time period, cohort, and indicator used. Well educated women had pioneered cohabitation in the 1970s and 1980s: but in the most recent cohorts, the less educated had exceeded the best educated in the proportions ever having cohabited at young ages. However, the main difference by education seemed largely a matter of timing: the less educated started cohabiting earlier than the best educated. Educational differentials in cohabitation appeared to be reinstating long-standing social patterns in the level and timing of marriage. Taking partnerships as a whole, social differentials had been fairly stable. Following a period of innovation and diffusion, there was much continuity with the past.
Source: Maire Ni Bhrolchain and Eva Beaujouan, 'Education and cohabitation in Britain: a return to traditional patterns?', Population and Development Review, Volume 39 Issue 3
Date: 2013-Sep
A think-tank report said that because marriage offered 'unparalleled stability' for families and children, it was right to recognize it through a transferable tax allowance. It was also essential that this recognition was meaningful: setting the allowance too low risked nullifying its potential to support low-income married couples and could undermine the whole policy. The report proposed that one-earner married families with small children should get a tax cut worth more than £30 a month, instead of the much smaller allowance expected to be introduced by the coalition government.
Source: Supporting Families, Strengthening Marriage: A plan for a meaningful transferable tax allowance for married couples, Centre for Social Justice
Links: Report | CSJ press release | Daily Mail report
Date: 2013-Sep
A think-tank report said that there was a significant discrepancy between official figures for the number of lone-parent households in England and Wales and the number of people who were claiming lone-parent tax credits. It said that at least 240,000 couples with children were pretending to live apart in order to claim the credits. The report called for the introduction of an additional child benefit for married couples with a child under the age of 3: this would counteract the 'couple penalty' that meant that couples with children were up to £7,100 better off if they were not married and pretended to live apart.
Source: Harry Benson, A Marriage Tax Break Must Counter the Crazy Incentive for Parents to 'Pretend to Live Apart', Marriage Foundation
Links: Report | Marriage Foundation press release
Date: 2013-Sep
The Prime Minister (David Cameron MP) announced – in an article in the Daily Mail newspaper – that a transferable tax allowance of £1,000 per year would be introduced from 2015 for married couples and civil (same-sex) partners paying the standard rate of income tax. The Conservative Party's coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, described the proposal as 'a tax cut for some paid for by everyone else' and the 'wrong priority'.
Source: Daily Mail, 27 September 2013 | Press release 28 September 2013, Liberal Democrats
Links: Daily Mail article | HMT press release | CARE press release | Gingerbread press release | IFS press release | Liberal Democrats press release | Marriage Foundation press release | BBC report | Daily Mail report | Guardian report (1) | Guardian report (2) | Telegraph report | New Statesman report (1) | New Statesman report (2) | Public Finance report
Date: 2013-Sep
A new book examined the growing trend of solo living, with a focus on working-age men and women living in urban and rural areas. Living alone had first become prevalent among elderly people, but had since become common at ages associated with having partners and children. Fears about the end of family and community had combined in popular depictions with stereotypes of the 'sad and lonely' or 'selfish singles'.
Source: Lynn Jamieson and Roona Simpson, Living Alone: Globalization, identity and belonging, Palgrave Macmillan
Links: Summary
Date: 2013-Sep
An article examined the relationship between women's ages at first marriage and marriage cohort divorce rates in England and Wales. It assessed the importance of relative ages at marriage (based on rankings within marriage cohorts) and of absolute, chronological ages at marriage; and it evaluated the contribution of changes in the age at marriage distribution to observed divorce rates. The results suggested that much of the impact of age at marriage was linked to relative ages, reducing the extent of this 'braking' effect. It also appeared that a positive effect of relative age at marriage on the risk of divorce for later marriages was outweighed by the negative effect of absolute age at marriage at higher ages.
Source: Richard Lampard, 'Age at marriage and the risk of divorce in England and Wales', Demographic Research, Volume 29
Date: 2013-Jul
A report said that cohabiting couples who had children were more than twice as likely to split up as those who had married beforehand.
Source: Harry Benson, The Myth of 'Long-Term Stable Relationships' outside of Marriage, Marriage Foundation
Links: Report | Marriage Foundation press release | Daily Mail report | Telegraph report
Date: 2013-May
An article reported a study in Italy and the United Kingdom that found no support for the idea that cohabitation (as opposed to marriage) weakened inter-generational ties. No differences in parent-adult child contact between cohabiting and married individuals were found in the United Kingdom, and only to a very limited extent in Italy.
Source: Tiziana Nazio and Chiara Saraceno, 'Does cohabitation lead to weaker intergenerational bonds than marriage? A comparison between Italy and the United Kingdom', European Sociological Review, Volume 29 Number 3
Links: Abstract
Date: 2013-May
A study found that over one-fifth of those normally classified as 'single' were actually in a relationship but not living with their partner – equivalent to 9 per cent of all adults in Britain.
Source: Simon Duncan, Miranda Phillips, Sasha Roseneil, Julia Carter, and Mariya Stoilova, Living Apart Together: Uncoupling intimacy and co-residence, Economic and Social Research Council
Links: Briefing | Birkbeck press release
Date: 2013-Apr
A think-tank paper criticized the the coalition government's proposals on same-sex marriage for compromising the meaning of both traditional heterosexual marriage and homosexual partnership. There was a risk that one definition of marriage would supplant and effectively erode another. Traditional conjugal marriage was under threat from a weaker conception of marriage that promoted partnerships that did not extend beyond the self-interest of the couple.
Source: Roger Scruton and Phillip Blond, Marriage: Union for the future or contract for the present, ResPublica
Links: Paper | ResPublica press release | Ekklesia report
Date: 2013-Feb
An article examined whether couples who were 'living apart together' (LAT) should have access to legal rights and protection (proposed or achieved) in the same way as unmarried cohabitants. A significant proportion of LAT partners extended substantial levels of care and support both to each other and, if relevant, to their partners' dependent children. The authors suggested that opt-in legal provisions could provide a model for any extension of legal rights to LAT relationships.
Source: Simon Duncan, Julia Carter, Miranda Phillips, Sasha Roseneil, and Mariya Stoilova, 'Legal rights for people who "live apart together"?', Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law, Volume 34 Number 4
Links: Abstract
Date: 2013-Jan