Diffusion of Cohabitation between Young Men and Women in Italy: Gender and Generations matter?

Paola Di Giulio, Università di Roma "La Sapienza"
Alessandro Rosina, Università Cattolica

Since the beginning of the 70s cohabitation started to spread among younger generations in Western and Northern European countries as a form of entering the first union, alternative to marriage. This did not happen in Italy and in the Mediterranean countries. Scholars perceived this as a delay in the adoption of the innovative behaviors, as it happened with the fertility decline. Despite this prediction, in the present time Italy has still one of the lowest percentage of cohabiting people in Europe, although there is a small increase in the youngest generations. To understand the difference between the behavior of young women and men in Italy and same age ones in Northern, Western (and in some cases Eastern) European countries, we consider the characteristics of the gender system and the intergenerational ties between parents and children in Europe.