Cohabiting couple's economic organization and marriage patterns across social classes.

Objective: Empirically examine whether different economic theories of marriage formation predict the transition from cohabitation to marriage differently across social classes. Background: Less-educated individuals marry their cohabiting partners at lower rates than their college-educated peers, but the reasons for this are unknown. Few studies have examined the intersection of social class and couple-level economic resources to understand if the potentially gendered economic determinants of marriage vary according to a couple's social location. Method: Couple-month data come from the 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation, including 1,879 cohabiting couples, 478 of whom transition to marriage. Logistic regression is used to test whether the marriage bar, gender specialization, gendered institutions, or gender revolution framework best predicts the likelihood of marrying. Results: Joint indicators of the marriage bar and the gendered economic organization of couples both predict marriage, but the specific gendered organization varies by the couple's level of education. Among couples where neither partner has a college degree, male-breadwinning couples are most likely to marry; dual-earning couples are most likely to marry among more-educated couples. Conclusion: Although college-educated couples seem to have shifted to a more egalitarian model of marriage, as predicted by the