Cohabitating is less stable than marriage

A study by the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that couples who live together are less likely to stay together than are couples who marry. The report, “Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States,” said that by the age of 30, three-quarters of women in the U.S. have been married, and about half have cohabited outside of marriage.

The findings, based on interviews conducted in 1995 with nearly 11,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44, focused on both individual and community factors associated with long-term marriages, divorce, and separation. The study also looked at conditions associated with cohabitation, and the impact that such a lifestyle has on marital stability.

Dr. Ed Sondick, director of CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, said that the analysis went “beyond the basic ‘bookends’ of marriage and divorce to look more closely at how the issue of cohabitation impacts the life of a relationship.

The study found that the likelihood of a first marriage ending in separation or divorce within five years is 20 percent, while the probability of a pre-marital cohabitation ending in a breakup within five years is 49 percent. After 10 years, those figures rise to 33 percent and 62 percent, respectively.

According to the study, the probability that a divorced woman would marry within five years of her divorce was 54 percent (58 percent for white women, 44 percent for Hispanic women, and 32 percent for black women). However, there was a 23 percent probability that a second marriage would end in divorce after five years, and a 39 percent likelihood that it would end after ten years.

The study also found that there has been a significant decline in divorce and remarriage among women since the 1950s (65 percent in the 1950s, 50 percent in 1995).

Factors for women that contribute to a lasting marriage include: a woman’s age at the time she first married; whether she was raised in an intact home with a mother and father; whether religion plays a major role in her life; and whether she has a higher family income or lives in a community with a high median family income as well as low male unemployment and low poverty.

— E.P. News