Formation and disruption of couples in Italy: main characteristics and new trends

Giancarlo Gualtieri, Instituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Antonella Guarneri, Instituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Claudia Iaccarino, Instituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Sabrina Prati, Instituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)

The aim of this study is to describe the changes in terms of formation and disruption of couples occurred during the last ten years and try to verify if these changes are the result or not of the spreading of new behavior models. Official administrative surveys represent precious sources for monitoring the larger part of the phenomenon of family formation and disruption in Italy. In fact, despite of the growing importance of de facto unions, marriage remains the main category of family formation. In order to synthesize the phenomenon of family formation and disruption, we use both a descriptive analysis and a multivariate analysis. The idea is to create and consider simultaneously a set of indicators where the territorial level represents a crucial variable to take into account. In fact, the territorial distribution is quite remarkable to study because of different attitudes and behaviours that characterize the various Italian regional contexts with a peculiar contraposition between, on one hand, the north-centre and the rest of the country and, on the other hand, the areas with different demographic sizes. The reasons behind the different attitudes toward marriage and the existence of less traditional models in different areas of the country are most likely to be searched both in the different socio-demographic characteristics of spouses and in the inner situations detectable in the various areas of the country. In addition, a particular attention is devoted to the foreign population attitudes. Marriages with at least one foreign citizen assume different characteristics according to the type of marriage. These peculiar aspects deserve to be studied in detail.