Abstract
This study examines how personal traits affect the likelihood of entering into a cohabitating or marital relationship using a competing risk survival model with cohabitation and marriage as competing outcomes. The data are from Waves 1, 3, and 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a rich dataset with a large sample of young adults (N= 9835). A personal traits index is constructed from interviewer-assessed scores on the respondents' physical attractiveness, personality, and grooming. Having a higher score on the personal traits index is associated with a greater hazard of entering into a marital relationship for men and women, but the score does not have a significant influence on entering into a cohabitating relationship. Numerous sensitivity tests support the core findings.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 184-199 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Social Science Research |
| Volume | 45 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2014 |
Bibliographical note
Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Funding
This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations.
ASJC Scopus Subject Areas
- Education
- Sociology and Political Science
Keywords
- Cohabitation
- Marriage
- Personal traits
- Residence Characteristics
- Humans
- Probability
- Social Desirability
- Male
- Personality
- Physical Appearance, Body
- Young Adult
- Adolescent
- Sex Factors
- Adult
- Female
- Sexual Partners
- Longitudinal Studies
Disciplines
- Education
- Political Science