Associations between different households' arrangements for couples and satisfaction with life

• Autor(a) principal: André Braz Golgher
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Artigo de conferência
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFMG
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1843/36887; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5884-225X
• topic: Marriage; Cohabitation; Well-being levels; Brazil; Casamento; Famílias; Bem-estar; Brasil

This paper investigates the relationship between marital arrangements and well-being in Brazil using the Social Dimensions of Inequalities Survey. Initially, household arrangements with couples in Brazil were classified in seven different types: one for those married or in relationships indistinguishable from married; and six for consensual marriage. By doing so, the paper could empirically address the natural heterogeneity of marriage and cohabitation and well-being levels. The empirical strategy was the following. First, I estimated multinomial logistic models and a probit model with continuous endogenous regressors to analyze correlations between well-being and household arrangements. Then, I estimated standard linear models, multilevel models and IV models to address the reverse link. Finally, I estimated both models interactively, taking into account the circular causality between well-being and household arrangements. The results suggest that the link between well-being and some types of household arrangements was significant, whereas that between household arrangements and well-being was weaker, mostly non-significant. That is, it seems that married people are more satisfied with their life than those in some specific household arrangements because individuals more satisfied with their life in some arrangements show a greater propensity to marry. However, those in an informal union for less than 10 years in a 1ª union without children significantly showed lower levels of well-being than married individuals due to two factors: individuals with higher well-being levels tend to marry in greater proportion; and those in this type of union show lower levels of well-being because of the idiosyncrasies of the union.