The Educational Gradient of Childbearing within Cohabitation in Europe

Using data from the first round of the national Gender and Generations Surveys of Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria, and from a similar survey of Hungary, which were all collected in recent years, we study rates of entry into marital and non-marital unions. We have used elements from the narrative of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) as a vehicle to give our analysis of the data from the four countries some coherence, and find what can be traces of the SDT in these countries. The details vary by country; in particular, latter-day developments in union formation patterns did not start at the same time in all the countries, but in our assessment it began everywhere before communism fell, that is, before the societal transition to a market economy got underway in 1990.