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Introduction
Previous studies suggest that the incompatibility between the roles of student and spouse might be one of the mechanisms that explain the relationship between educational attainment and the process of union formation (Thornton et al., 1995). Research around this relationship has focused on the educational level gradient between the timing and quantum of marriage. One of the recurrent findings is that school attendance is associated with a lower risk of marriage (Binstock, 2005; Lindstrom and Brambila Paz, 2001; Parrado and Zenteno, 2002). Conversely, scholars argue that while in marriage, particularly in the case of young women, the role of the spouse competes with the role of student (United Nations Population Fund, 2012).
In Latin America, the literature has focused on the association of education and marriage at the time of the first union. However, experience in other regions found evidence that suggests that school attendance patterns change throughout the life course (Davis and Bumpass, 1976; MacGregor, 2009). Moreover, research has focused on women, overlooking the interaction of educational and marital experiences of men. One of the gaps in the study on the relationship between marriage and school in Latin America is how these two elements interact after entering the first union and how this interaction differs between men and women, particularly during adulthood.
Using data from the 2017 Retrospective Demographic Survey of Mexico (Eder-Mx) and the 2019 Retrospective Demographic Survey of the City of Buenos Aires (Eder-BsAs), I address two research questions: (a) How does school attendance evolve after the onset of the conjugal trajectory? and (b) Are there gender differences in the evolution of these intertwined trajectories? The purpose of the study is to explore how educational and marital trajectories interact throughout the life course of men and women between the ages of 12 and 35 by using information from Mexico City and Buenos Aires, two of the biggest cities in Latin America.
This study contributes three important insights to the research on the association between education and marriage. First, by analyzing the dyadic path after the first union throughout adolescence and adulthood by extending the observation window until the mid-thirties. Second, I incorporate men into the analysis in acknowledgment of potential differences by gender in both trajectories. Finally, I consider the heterogeneity of the Latin American region by comparing two cities with distinctive characteristics of the process of union formation and educational profile (Solís et al., 2008; Zavala et al., 2020).
Background
The role incompatibility between the status of student and spouse has been a relevant theoretical explanation in family formation. The conflict lies in the simultaneity of age-specific normative roles expected to happen in sequence and the difficulty in balancing both time and resources demanded by school and marriage (Thornton et al., 1995). Studies in Latin America and other regions that considered school attendance, by examining attendance itself or through enrollment, have found support for this incompatibility, observing that school attendance prevents from entering marriage, particularly for young women (Binstock, 2005; Blossfeld, 1995; Lindstrom and Brambila Paz, 2001; Parrado and Zenteno, 2002; Pérez Amador and Giorguli Saucedo, 2018). This deterrent effect would partially explain the negative association between marriage and education observed consistently until the beginning of this century. Although a large body of work has examined the non-simultaneity between marriage and school at the time of the first union, there is less information about the combined trajectories of men.
Post-nuptial school attendance has not been well documented in the last decades, particularly in Latin America, probably due to its low incidence. It could be argued that school attendance after marriage might have changed over time, particularly for women, considering that school attainment has increased in the last decades and the schedule of the first union has remained relatively stable. In 1976, Davis and Bumpass (1976) showed that in the United States, the extent of school attendance after the first marriage was not minimal: one out of five white women married after 1950 had attended school since marriage. They also found that its magnitude was positively associated with the level of educational attainment at marriage, so the incidence would be more than 40 per cent for women with college education. Prior studies have also documented that women who experience a union dissolution are more likely to return to school (Dempster-McClain, cited in MacGregor, 2009). Of course, both school attendance and divorce might have a causal relation in both directions, especially for women. Returning to school produces conflict within couples because it could imply changes in gendered expectations of time provision and domestic work (Sweet and Moen, 2007).
Expectations for the interaction of the education attendance and conjugal trajectories given theoretical explanations
The expectations on the sequential interaction of marriage and education attendance are based on the role incompatibility theory with a gender perspective. First, the school’s time demands might compete with those needed for other roles, such as marriage (Thornton et al., 1995). Also, the financial independence required to fulfill the spouse role could conflict with the dependence related to the student’s position (Thornton et al., 1995). Finally, in an institution such as marriage, where the role expectations are highly gendered, social pressure would be expected to perform according to a normative arrangement (Goode, 1960).
Therefore, a low simultaneity of school attendance and marriage is anticipated for both women and men. In a context where women do more housework than men, the student’s role as a woman would imply a lesser allocation of time for housework. Furthermore, the student’s role signifies a non-normative performance of her role as a spouse. For men, their role as a student would conflict with the one as a provider, both in time and financial resources. And accordingly, once the spouse’s role ends (i.e. when the marriage dissolves), a higher opportunity to attend school would increase. However, considering a scenario like the Latin American one where there has been an increase in educational attainment, particularly for women, and differences in the timing of union formation by educational level.
Hypotheses
Based on previous research, I derive the following three hypotheses: 1. After the first union, the role incompatibility remains, so the spouse’s role prevails over the student’s role after the onset of the marital trajectory; 2. If the first union dissolves, then school attendance increases; 3. Women will experience more school attendance before and after the onset of the marital trajectory than men, and 4. Overall, the combined sequencing of school attendance and marital trajectory between men and women is different.
Material and methods
Data
The data used in this study are from the 2017 Retrospective Demographic Survey of Mexico (Eder- Mx) published by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico (INEGI) (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, 2018) and the 2019 Retrospective Demographic Survey of the City of Buenos Aires (Eder-BsAs), published by the General Direction of Statistics and Census of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires (DGEyC) (Dirección General de Estadística y Censos del Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 2021). In both surveys, an event-history life calendar method was used to collect retrospective information from several life-course domains, including marital and educational trajectories. The Eder-BsAs captures retrospective information on the life history of the birth cohorts 1948-1952, 1968-1972, and 1978-1982 and contains information on 1,220 individuals (Dirección General de Estadística y Censos del Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 2021). The Eder-Mx is representative at a national and state level and captures information on more than 23,000 individuals born between 1962 and 1997, of which 672 were located in Mexico City.
These surveys are suited for this analysis because they share the same methodology, so it is possible to pool and compare their information. Also, they collected detailed education, marriage, and cohabitation histories, including the start and end year of the first marriage or cohabitation and movements in and out of school. Using the Eder-BsAs, I restricted the analysis to a cohort of women and men born between 1978 and 1982. In the case of the Eder-Mx, the sample consists of women and men born between 1973 and 1982 living in households in Mexico City. The Mexican cohort's time interval is broader to balance the sample between the two cities. I excluded prior cohorts because I am interested in the trajectories of the youngest cohort, and comparison with older cohorts is out of the scope of this study. I followed these individuals from age 12 to 35. I used a year time scale with twenty-four positions to construct a sequence-type simultaneous representation for school and conjugal trajectories. I excluded one respondent with an incomplete school trajectory. The final analytic sample consists of 575 individuals with complete sequences (i.e., with complete trajectories). Finally, I did not use weighted data because the Eder-BsAs public information does not include weights. Those included in the Eder-Mx depict the population at the time of the survey and do not constitute a longitudinal retrospective representation of the population.
Analytical Strategy
The study was based on a descriptive analysis of combined sequences by sex and city to observe differences in the dual trajectories between men and women in different contexts, acknowledging the region’s heterogeneity. First, I presented a descriptive overview of the sequences by using visualization tools to summarize information about the sequences by sex and by combining sex and city. I showed state distribution plots that depict the distribution of the states in each position and the modal state in each stage (Fasang and Liao, 2014; Gabadinho et al., 2011). The mean time spent in each state was also calculated.
Second, I statistically assessed the differences in sequences between men and women in both cities by using discrepancy analysis to examine the association between sequences and a covariate (in this case, sex) without any prior clustering (Studer et al., 2011). As Studer et al. state (op. cit.), the discrepancy analysis is based on pairwise dissimilarities and can be interpreted as a proxy of variability. The pairwise distances were computed with optimal matching, using an insertion-deletion cost (also known as indel cost) of one and a data-driven substitution cost, i.e., based on transition rates observed in the data. Finally, the Levene statistic was calculated to identify the age pattern of the differences. The sequence analysis was performed in R (R Core Team, 2021) using the TraMineR package (Gabadinho et al., 2011).
Sequences definition
I created a dual state combining school attendance and conjugal state in each year-person. The school attendance captures the movements in and out of school for each person-year using two categories: 1. if the individual attended school at least one year in any level of education, except for pre-school and special education (to capture only formal attendance), and 0. if the individual did not attend school. The conjugal state in each year is represented in four categories based on the trajectory of the first union: 1. never married or cohabiting, 2. cohabiting, 3. married, and 4. dissolution, which comprises the separated, divorced, widows, and widowers. The analysis considers only the first union (and first dissolution) trajectory to control the marriage order. If the respondents were to enter into a second (or higher) union, they remain in dissolution for the purposes of this analysis.
By combining these two dimensions, I defined eight possible states that may occur in the sequence, as depicted in Table 2. The state OS means that the individual is not attending school and has never been married or cohabitated at a given age. OC means that the individual is not attending school and is cohabiting. OM implies that the individual is not attending school and is married, and OD means that the individual is not attending school and had a previous union that is dissolved. Similarly, the remaining states refer to the condition in which, at a given age, the individual is attending school and is single (SS), in cohabitation (SC), married (SM), or when the first union has been dissolved (SD).
Table 1 Analytic sample by sex and city
| City | Men | Women | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buenos Aires | 162 | 177 | 339 |
| Mexico City | 116 | 120 | 236 |
| Total | 278 | 297 | 575 |
Source: Eder-Mx and Eder-BsAs.
Results
To provide a descriptive overview of the sequence data, Figure 1 presents the state distribution plots of school attendance and conjugal trajectories by sex. It is not a longitudinal representation; it describes all individuals’ states’ distribution at each age. The distribution plots suggest differences between men and women. Men remained more time single than women. For instance, at age 18, 94 per cent of men in the sample were single, regardless of their school attendance status. On the other hand, 82 per cent of women aged 18 were single. After adolescence, the status more frequent for women was when they were married or cohabiting and not attending school. In the case of men, the single status remained high, but the non-school attendance was as frequent as for women. School attendance after the onset of the conjugal trajectory during adolescence was low. Nevertheless, there was a minor increase around their late twenties, particularly for women. At 30 years old, post-nuptial school attendance reaches its peak: eight per cent of men and seven per cent of women attend school after entering their first union.
Figure 2 presents the state distribution plots of school attendance and conjugal trajectories by sex and city to evidence differences by gender in contrasting contexts. In both cities, men remained more time as never partnered. A difference observed between cities was a higher frequency of the state OD in Buenos Aires throughout the late twenties and thirties. Another difference was a higher prevalence of school attendance after the mid-twenties in Buenos Aires than in Mexico City and post-nuptial attendance (i.e., the states SC, SM, and SD) for both men and women. In Buenos Aires, at 30 years old (when it reaches its peak), 11 per cent of men and women attended school after their first union, whereas in Mexico City, the highest percentage is four per cent for men at 30 years old and five per cent for women at 33 years old.
Figure 3 depicts the modal state in each position. During the first 11 years (from 12 to 22 years old), the most frequent state for women was never partnered and attending school. Afterward, the modal state changed to never partnered and not attending school, and at 27 years, the modal state changed to married. At 35 years old, the modal state changed to a dissolved union and not attending school. For men, on the other hand, school attendance and never-partnered state remain as a modal state during adolescence until 18 years old. As part of the most frequent state, school attendance was interrupted for a year, and then, from 21 years old, most of the men in the sample remained single until 29 years old. At the beginning of the thirties, cohabitation appeared as a modal state, followed by marriage, without school attendance. There was no position in all the age ranges for both men and women where a combination of school attendance and marriage or cohabitation prevailed.
When the modal states are broken down by city, as in Figure 4, the differences between men and women show some nuances. The modal states where they are never partnered appeared for a more extended period in women of Buenos Aires. The modal state that combines school attendance also appeared for a more extended period in women in Buenos Aires. In Mexico City, marriage prevailed during the late twenties and thirties, and in Buenos Aires, cohabitation and dissolution.
On the other hand, men in Mexico City presented a longer period with a modal state of never partnered than their peers in Buenos Aires, and marriage was more frequent in the thirties. In Buenos Aires, cohabitation prevailed from the late twenties. Once again, there was no position in both cities for men and women, where a combination of school attendance and marriage or cohabitation prevailed. So far, there is evidence to support the first hypothesis. However, there is not enough evidence to support the second one.
Figure 5 represents the mean time spent in each state. In the sample, both men and women spent more time never partnered and attending school. This state (SS), however, was more present in men (8.22 years) than women (7.79 years). The second state with more presence in the sequences was when individuals remained single and did not attend school. Once again, this state (0S) was more present in men (6.79 years) than in women (4.57 years). The time spent in the states 0C, 0M, and 0D was higher in women. As evidenced before, the time spent in states where there was a combination of roles, i.e., SC, SM, and SD, was low for men and women.
The 95 per cent confidence interval of the mean time spent in each state by sex in each city is detailed in Table 3 to evaluate the extent of the differences. The average time spent as single and attending school (SS) was not significantly different between men and women in both cities, unlike the time spent as single and not attending school (0S), which was higher in men. There were no differences by sex in the average time spent not attending school and cohabiting (0C). There were no differences in the states 0M and OD in Buenos Aires. In Mexico City, the differences were more evident, with the time higher in women. As mentioned before, the average time of any state that involves school attendance, except for the never-partnered state, was very low, and there were no significant differences by sex, which did not provide enough evidence to support women experienced more school attendance before and after the onset of the conjugal trajectory than men. It is worth noting some differences by city. Women in Buenos Aires spent more time in the states SS, SC, and 0C, whereas women in Mexico City spent more time in the states 0S and 0M. Men in Buenos Aires spent more time in the states SS and SC, and men in Mexico City spent more time in the state 0S.
Table 3 Confidence interval of the mean time spent in years by sex and city
| Buenos Aires | Mexico City | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| State | Men | Women | Men | Women | |
| 0S | [4.96;6.35] | [3.21;4.33] | [7.29;9.47] | [4.71;6.79] | |
| 0C | [3.45;4.84] | [3.72;5.23] | [1.91;3.78] | [1.67;3.50] | |
| 0M | [1.83;3.03] | [2.24;3.59] | [2.84;4.82] | [4.77;7.20] | |
| 0D | [1.39;2.50] | [2.17;3.49] | [0.48;1.66] | [1.63;3.24] | |
| SS | [8.13;9.49] | [7.89;9.24] | [6.61;8.20] | [5.94;7.38] | |
| SC | [0.34;0.72] | [0.47;0.86] | [0.01;0.25] | [0.00;0.16] | |
| SM | [0.12;0.45] | [0.22;0.56] | [0.12;0.49] | [0.17;0.55] | |
| SD | [0.07;0.32] | [0.17;0.61] | [0.00;0.11] | [0.03;0.27] | |
Source: Eder-Mx and Eder-BsAs.
A discrepancy analysis was performed to statistically evaluate if there are gender differences in the dual trajectories. As mentioned before, the pairwise distances required for the study were computed with optimal matching, using an indel cost of one and a substitution cost based on transition rates observed in the data. I performed sensitivity analyses by using indel costs of 0.5 and 1.5. These analyses showed similar findings. Table 4 presents the results of the study. There were significant gender differences between men and women overall and within each city analyzed. Women’s trajectories were statistically more heterogeneous than men, considering the whole sample and within each city.
Table 4 Between-group discrepancy analysis by sex
| Sex | n | Discrepancy | p-value* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 0.001 | ||
| Men | 278 | 12.00 | |
| Women | 297 | 13.31 | |
| Buenos Aires | 0.003 | ||
| Men | 162 | 11.48 | |
| Women | 177 | 12.61 | |
| Mexico City | 0.008 | ||
| Men | 116 | 12.00 | |
| Women | 120 | 13.38 |
* p-value significance of Levene’s test.
Source: Eder-Mx and Eder-BsAs.
Following Studer et al. (2011), Figure 6 presents the evolution of the Levene statistic to identify the extent of the differences in the sequences by age. The curve shows low differences in the discrepancy during adolescence but increases with age, reaching its peak at 19 years old, which indicates the most prominent differences by sex.
Discussion
Literature suggests that role incompatibility is one of the explanations for the negative association between education and marriage (Lindstrom and Brambila Paz, 2001; Thornton et al., 1995). This theory has been assessed broadly by analyzing the association between education level and the timing of the first union, mostly among women. As the average schooling years have increased in Latin America, the study of post-nuptial education is relevant. I analyzed the sequencing of school attendance and the conjugal trajectory of men and women throughout their adolescence and early adulthood (individuals aged 12 to 35) in two major Latin American cities with different nuptial and educational characteristics, Buenos Aires and Mexico City, in order to evidence if the role incompatibility remains after the onset of the conjugal trajectory and if there are differences in the interaction between school attendance and conjugal trajectory by gender.
The sequences of the trajectories are clear. On average, individuals remained more time single and attending school (SS) and single and not attending school (0S) during their adolescence and early twenties before their first union. Individuals stopped their school attendance before they began their marital life. This result is consistent with previous research showing that individuals leave school before entering the first union (Echarri Cánovas and Pérez Amador, 2007; Pérez Amador and Giorguli Saucedo, 2018; Sánchez Bringas and Pérez Baleón, 2016).
How did school attendance evolve after the onset of the conjugal trajectory? After the first union, the role incompatibility remained, and the spouse’s role prevailed over the student’s role. Consistent with Hypothesis 1, once individuals entered their first union, school attendance was minimal for men and women, particularly in Mexico City. This might also be applicable to prior cohorts. For instance, according to the 2010 Census of Argentina, six per cent of married men and eight per cent of married women under 45 years old attended school.
The incompatibility did not decrease once the union dissolved, and school attendance remained low, so there was insufficient evidence to support Hypothesis 2. Also, dissolution at early stages of adulthood could make individuals restructure their resources, including time, making it more difficult (at least temporarily) to either return to school or continue their school attendance. Even though there is not enough evidence of school attendance after the dissolution, individuals who are in the state SD at age t have a high probability (over 71 per cent) to continue in the same state at age t+1, as depicted in the last row of Appendix 1. This probability is even higher for cohabitators (i.e., the transition SC-SC) and married individuals (SM-SM).
It is worth noting that school attendance and divorce are endogenous: those individuals who experience a union dissolution are more likely to return to school (Dempster-McClain, cited in MacGregor, 2009), and post-nuptial school attendance can produce conflict within the household (Sweet and Moen, 2007) and increase the risk of dissolution. Indeed, there are non-null transition probabilities in the sample to transit from the states SC and SM at age t to the state SD at age t+1, as depicted in Appendix 1. However, these rates are low (five per cent for cohabitators and three per cent for married individuals).
There was no evidence that women experienced more school attendance before and after the onset of the conjugal trajectory than men (Hypothesis 3). As depicted in the average time spent in each state by sex in each city (Table 3), there were no significant differences in school attendance by sex, regardless of the marital state. These differences were tested for ages under and over 18 years old, and the results were the same. This result is relevant because it proves a closed gender gap in education attendance. However, it was unexpected, particularly for Buenos Aires, because previous studies show that women have higher educational attainment (Binstock, 2005) and spend more time in school than men (Solís et al., 2008; Zavala et al., 2020).
In Mexico City, there is evidence that women left school earlier than men (Solís et al., 2008). Nonetheless, in a more recent study at a national level, Sánchez y Pérez (2016) evidenced that women aged 13-19 of cohort 1978-1980 spent one year more in school than men in the same age group. Zavala et al. (2020) observed in Mexico City that women of cohort 1978-1982 left school before turning 20 years old in a higher proportion than men (53.5 per cent vs. 47 per cent), but this relation was reversed for individuals under 30 years old: the proportion of women leaving school was lower than men (83.6 per cent vs. 88.8 per cent). Nevertheless, this would be consistent with the development of trajectories in other spheres of life. For instance, if women enter marriage earlier than men and the first child’s arrival is shortly after the first union (Giorguli Saucedo, 2010; Pérez Amador and Giorguli Saucedo, 2018), this would probably represent a higher work burden for women, which would prevent them from attending school.
Are there gender differences in these trajectories? Overall, the combined sequencing of school attendance and conjugal trajectory between men and women were statistically different, as expected in Hypothesis 4. The differences by sex concentrate around the age of 19 years old. For a more comprehensive understanding of findings, future research should aim to incorporate sequences of other spheres, such as reproductive and labor trajectories.
This study has limitations. Even though both surveys have a powerful instrument for collecting retrospective information, the event-history life calendar, the information overlooks events that occurred within a year. A lower level of granularity (for instance, a monthly sequence) could have provided more details. However, a higher granularity, such as a yearly detail of sequences, has two advantages. First, annual granularity reduces the computing load. Second, from a conceptual perspective, age is a strong device for the institutionalization of life course (Kohli, 2007), so, for this study, a yearly sequence depicts the combined trajectory of individuals appropriately.
Also, a caveat to the analysis is that the declaration of school attendance in each year does not necessarily coincide with a school year, so the attendance might be overestimated for those going to school at the time of the interview, but they left school that academic year. Another limitation is the absence of weights throughout the analysis. To what extent can the findings be generalized constitutes an external validity problem, which I recognize is a significant limitation.
Findings suggest that, even though there is a low prevalence of post-nuptial school attendance, it is not null. To the best of my knowledge, there is no contemporary evidence of trends in school attendance after the first union, but one might suspect that it will increase parallel to the increase in years of schooling. This study raises several questions regarding the implications of post-nuptial school attendance. What are the demographic and socioeconomic factors related to post-nuptial school attendance? Do the individuals who go to school after the first union and combine time and other resources with their family formation process require further institutional responses from school in order to enable them to continue their education? Is post-nuptial school attendance another dimension delineated by the inequality that characterizes the region?
This study contributed three elements to the research on the association between school and marriage. First, observing the combined path of school attendance and conjugal trajectory throughout adolescence and early adulthood. Second, men were incorporated into the analysis to acknowledge differences by gender in both trajectories. Finally, the study considered the heterogeneity of the Latin American region by comparing two important cities with different characteristics of the process of union formation and educational profile (Solís et al., 2008; Zavala et al., 2020). The study found that the role incompatibility remained, the spouse’s role prevailed over the student’s role, and such incompatibility did not decrease once the union dissolved. There was no evidence that women experienced more school attendance before and after the onset of the conjugal trajectory than men. Finally, the overall sequences of school attendance and conjugal trajectory between men and women proved to be different.
