Paper presented at the 5th Generations and Gender Programme User Conference , 23-24 October 201 9 , Paris, in the session "Partnerships and inequalities" Abstract Despite the persistence of the institution of marriage, analyses on marital intentions and their realization are relatively rare, especially in an international comparison. Moreover, most studies that look into the demographic consequences of the Great Recession concentrate on behaviour (often on fertility) and only few of them use individual-level panel data. Previous studies found reduced marriage rates and postponement as a result of the recession. However, the question still remains: how did the recession affect marital intentions and their realization? Did socioeconomic differences in marital intentions increase during the economic crisis? In order to answer these questions, we use data from the three waves of the Generations and Gender Survey, supplemented with data from the fourth wave of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Survey and the fifth ...