Cohabitation

Demographics of Cohabitation

The recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in cohabitation in the United States, as well as in Canada and in many Western European countries. The following statistics are from the United States, though many of these trends apply to other countries, too. From 1960 to 2000, there was more than a tenfold increase in the number of cohabiting couples. Further, around 70 percent of couples live together before marriage. These figures coincide with other notable changes with regard to marriage in the United States, including a rise in divorce rates over the past 5 decades (though they have leveled off more recently) and a later and later average age for first marriage.

Many cohabiting couples have children, whether their own or from previous relationships. As many as 40 percent of cohabiting couples have children residing with them, and 20 percent of children born in the 1990s will reside in a cohabiting household at some point while growing up.

Many studies in the United States, and in some other countries, find that couples who cohabit prior to marriage are more likely to have difficulties in their marriages and to divorce. This phenomenon has been somewhat of a mystery for social scientists, and something that is barely believable to the average person. After all, most people, especially young people, assume that trying out living together should improve the odds of doing well in marriage. Yet no study supports this idea. On average, those who cohabit prior to marriage are more likely to divorce, are less happy in their marriages, have higher levels of conflict, and have less confidence about their futures. This association with poorer outcomes in marriage is called the cohabitation effect. Like any other area of research, such findings are about what happens on average; there are many couples who would be exceptions to the general trend. Many couples who cohabit beforehand have fine marriages, and many couples who do not cohabit end up divorcing. Yet, on average, the data consistently show a higher risk associated with cohabitation. Although some social scientists expected that higher risks would no longer be found once cohabiting was more widely accepted, the newest studies continue to show the cohabitation effect.