DDRedging up the past: historic posts and marital institutions.

This article was published in Demographic Research today, which resonates with the themes of previous posts. There has naturally been previous research on a similar theme, but this paper is nice (from my perspectives) since it is an explicit comparison between the East and West, and also examines the interaction between social norms and behaviour.

On the normative foundations of marriage and cohabitation: Results from group discussions in eastern and western Germany

 Klaener and Knabe

Abstract

Background: Since the 1960s the inclination to get married has been declining in almost all western industrialised countries. Partnership arrangements have become more diverse and the share of cohabiting couples and nonmarital births has been increasing. Yet there are substantial regional differences in marriage and childbearing patterns, and the differences between eastern and western Germany are especially striking. We assume those differences can be partially explained by social norms and different attitudes towards marriage, cohabitation, and childbearing.

Objective: We explore the views and values young people in eastern and western Germany hold about marriage, cohabitation, and childbearing and how those views relate to individual life experiences. We also examine different social norms and contexts in both parts of the country.

Methods: We analyse data from qualitative focus group interviews conducted in in Rostock (eastern Germany) and Lübeck (western Germany) with women and men aged 25−40.

Results: Our findings indicate that there are normative differences between eastern and western Germans in their attitudes towards partnership, marriage, and family formation that can be traced back to the social and political conditions prior to German unification in 1990. The harmonisation of family laws and policies across Germany after 1990 did not automatically lead to a convergence in the norms and behaviours of the people living in these two regions.

 There are a few interesting points here, for instance looking at the effect of legal requirements on certain demographic behaviours: the pointlessness of marriage in the DDR now that some requirements of the Socialiast state no longer pertain is noted:

What marriage meant for our parents doesn’t apply to us today. […] I know that my parents got married because they were having a child, and would then get a flat. That’s not the case anymore. Today I can choose my own flat. [...] that’s the way it was in the GDR. There was the credit for couples with a large number of children, but you only got it if you were married. That was a real status, being married […] To be someone, you had to be married. And that’s been lost today

 Klaener and Knabe (2017) pp. 1651

This is a highly plausible case for a causal effect of an institution on demographic behaviour that I have been skeptical about previously (here and here and somewhat here). While the differences can't be fully attributed to differences in regimes pre-1990 (we saw differences within the German Empire) there does seem to be something close to an effect: the exact identification strategy needs some more exploration that said.