Linking marital status of youth to the marital status of mother, father of household head

INTERNATIONAL
1

I am interested in examining the relationship between youth marital status and parent marital status. I would like to know if this is possible using the IPUMS data.

2

This is really easy to do with IPUMS data, particularly when using the “Attach Characteristics” tool. If you include the variable MARST into your data extract and click the “Attach Characteristics” button on the Extract Request page, then you’ll be able to add variable such as MARST_mom and MARST_pop to your data extract. Let us know if you have any additional questions.

3

Thanks for the response. I fear i was not very clear in my first enquiry. I am interested in categoris such as cohabitationa and remarriage. Was wondering if i could assume consunsual union to be cohabitation but would there be a way to see mothers or head of households who have re-married in the sample!

Thank you.

4

Ah, okay. Well, in IPUMS CPS, there is a self-reported cohabitation varaible (PECOHAB), which identifies the line number of a cohabiting partner. This information is based on the question: “Do you have a boyfriend, girlfriend, or partner in this household?” I’m not sure how this relates to your definition of consentual union. Unfortunately, re-marriage is a difficult concept to identify in census data. The MARST variable really only identifies the current marital status of individuals.