Working Paper Abstract

How Do Cohabiting Couples With Children Spend Their Money?
Thomas DeLeire and Ariel Kalil
 

Abstract:
Cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent living arrangement in the United States. Although the effects of living in a cohabiting arrangement on child well-being are not fully understood, the literature on children growing up in cohabiting families suggests that they have poorer developmental outcomes than do those growing up in married-parent families or in single-parent families. We use the Consumer Expenditure Survey to see if cohabiting couples with children spend their income on a different set of goods (i.e., have a different distribution of expenditure) than either married parents or single parents. Using a variety of analytical methods, we find that cohabiting couples spend a substantially larger share of their total expenditure on alcohol and tobacco than do either married-parent families or single parents. Cohabiting couples with children also spend less on health care and less on education than do married parents.

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