literature review on “Everything’s There Except Money”: How Money Shapes Decisions to Marry Among Cohabitors, is conducted by Pamela J. Smock, Wendy D. Manning and Meredith Porter

Essay by keikei0607University, Bachelor'sA-, October 2014

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"Everything's There Except Money": How Money Shapes Decisions to Marry Among Cohabitors, is conducted by Pamela J. Smock, Wendy D. Manning and Meredith Porter, which was published in Journal of Marriage and Family (August, 2005). The authors observed the significant change in family pattern from early marriage and low levels of divorce to marriage in the average age, higher divorce rates and rising levels of cohabitation in last few decades. Given that cohabitation is the modal path to marriage in 2005, the research implicated economics circumstances is the reason people prefer cohabitation instead of getting marriage.

The study was built on paradigm of symbolic interactionism, positing that individual behavior is not only based on what is, but rather on individuals' interpretation of what is. It holds that classifying subjective meanings and interpretations is essential for recognizing individual behavior. It tends to focus on the macro that treated cohabiting men and women as units, applied both inductive approaches in the research.

The paper deducted former quantitative and qualitative researches as the context for the study. Selected studies were both published after 1990, use longitudinal data or cross-sectional data with retrospective histories and the data used in studies are representative. It is about the influences of economics in marriages and elaborated it by exploring whether there is positive correlated between financial states and getting marries. All in all, majority of the studies indicates with good financial states increases the chance to marry especially to cohabitors. To support above statement, a table showing the studies on the economics determinants of marriages from 1990-2004 is provide. Thus, it draws on data from 115 semi-structured in-depth interviews to investigate in whether and how the financial factors affected the cohabitors' attitude toward marriages.

This study is a qualitative research that interviewed 115 young adults. The target...