Recent Trends in First Partnership in Russia: Marriage or Cohabitation?

Sergei Zakharov, Russian Academy of Sciences

In Russia, marriage remained early and universal over the 20th century. By the 1990s, mean age at first marriage was the same as in the second half of the 19th century. The traditional marriage pattern continued to persist despite the drastic political and economic changes that took place over the last 100 years since the collapse of the Russian Empire through the breakdown of the empire of the Soviet Union. However Russian cohorts born in the 1970s and more recently, whose socialization has already been proceeding in the post-soviet Russia tend to differ from their parents and grandparents. They marry and become parents at more mature ages. They increasingly prefer to begin a partnership with cohabitation rather than legal marriage: no less than 25% of women by the age of 20, and no les than 45% by age 25 do not register a marriage with their first partner.