Insee Première · February 2023 · n° 1937

Highly educated women and men are more likely to live as a couple than those with lower education

In 2019 in France, 59% of people aged 18 or over were living as a couple in the same dwelling as their partner.

Among people aged 20 to 24, the share living with a partner declined significantly between 1982 and 1999. It stabilised in the 2000s, before declining again in the 2010s.

People over 70, and especially women, were more likely to live with a partner in 2019 than in previous decades. Indeed, a declining mortality delayed widowhood. In 2019, highly educated men and women were more frequently living with a partner than their less educated counterparts. So were seven out of ten graduate degree holders, compared to six out of ten people without a qualification. Before 2000, women with lower education were more frequently living with a partner than their more educated counterparts. As for men, these proportions depended little on education. The exception was those without a qualification, who were less likely to live with a partner than the others. The behaviour of women and men thus became more similar.

Whatever the generation, living with a partner is more frequent around age 40, for men, and 35, for women, than it is at any other age. Living with a partner is more frequent among older men than it is among their female counterparts, since widows outnumber widowers.