Competing Marital Contracts? Marriage after Civil Unions in France

Marion Leturcq, Université Catholique de Louvain

Large changes in marital trends during the second half of the 20th century raise the question of the reason leading to marriage in Western Europe and in Northern America: declining marriage rates, increasing cohabitation, increasing divorce rates. But the reason to get married can be diverse and evolves over the life cycle. This paper examines is there is a demand for different marital contracts. In France, since 1999, two types of marital contracts are available: marriage and civil union (pacs). This paper investigates the substitution between the two contracts analyzing the distribution of the age at first marriage by cohort. It detects some recent changes in the bottom of the distribution of the age at first marriage, indicating a small impact of pacs on marriage. Therefore, it tends to conclude that substitution effects are likely to be very small and that the pacs reveals a demand for different marital contracts.