The stability of partnerships across the transition from education to employment

ABSTRACT

This article examines the dynamics of emerging adults’ partnerships across the school-to-work transition. While previous research studied the impact of the school-to-work transition on cohabitation entry only, we focus on partnership disruption, accounting for cohabitation as a parallel process. We examine whether partnership volatility is tied to enrolment in education, which would imply greater opportunities for relationship and identity exploration, but also postponed family formation, for those enrolled in education longer. Moreover, we study the impact of non-employment after education on the stability of early partnerships. The analyses are based on PAIRFAM, a survey on relationship dynamics for young cohorts in Germany. Focusing on western Germany, we study partnerships that began during education. In a three-process model, we examine partnership disruptions and transformations of non-cohabiting partnerships into cohabitations, comparing the impact of educational enrolment, employment, and non-employment while controlling for selectivity in entering employment. We find that young men's transition from education to employment stabilizes their partnerships. However, partnership instability is higher for young men with phases of non-employment after education than for those who are employed. In contrast to men, the school-to-work transition has no effect on partnership stability for women.

KEYWORDS:

• Partnership separation
• cohabitation
• emerging adults
• school-to-work transition
• competing risks

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Thorsten Schneider, the Colloquium participants at the German Youth Institute, as well as the three anonymous referees for very helpful comments and advice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.