Gender Gap in Repartnering: The Role of Children: Evidence from the U.K.

Alessandro Di Nallo, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

I present an in-depth analysis of the role of parenthood and children’s living arrangements on new union formation of men and women in the UK. Using two cohorts datasets, the NCDS 1958 and the BCS 1970, which provide full retrospective information on unions and births up to age 42, I run discrete-time event history models combined with a multilevel approach to estimate gender differences in repartnering probability. I find evidence that the gender gap in new partnership formation is significantly but not entirely driven by parenthood, that is, fathers repartner more likely than mothers and childless men are still marginally more likely to find a partner than childless women. Further, I find that parent-child coresidence slows down the repartnering process of mothers and, to a lesser extent, fathers. However, this relationship tends to disappear only for fathers if custodial children are very young.