ENThis article examines the role of individual educational resources in the transition from cohabitation to marriage in Lithuania over the past four decades that cover the communist and the transitional periods with various developmental stages of cohabitation. Two competing hypotheses were formulated based on cultural and structural approaches. The first hypothesis anticipated a stable negative effect of higher education, the second a positive gradient of education for the transition from cohabitation to marriage after the 1990s. Pooled data from two waves of the before Generations and Gender Survey is used to apply the descriptive and parametric event history analysis. The research results prove that the role of education in the transition from cohabitation to marriage is dynamic over time and across gender groups. The educational resources were not significant for the entry into marriage during the communist period that coincided with the initial stage of the diffusion of cohabitation in the society and this holds true for men's and women's matrimonial behavior. The transitional period marks the shift towards the positive educational gradient that is especially stable for the men. We conclude that the ‘pattern of disadvantage’ is pronounced in the contemporary Lithuanian society and this indicates the return to the socio-economically differentiated marital behavior. [From the publication]