For more than 20 years, researchers have reported that premarital cohabitation is associated with an elevated risk of divorce. However, a recent report from America has cast doubt on this assumption.
The briefing report was presented to the Council on Contemporary Families, and noted that cohabitation has increased by more than 900% in the past 50 years.
Author Arielle Kuperberg, a sociologist at UNC-Greensboro, said that:
“Today 70% of women aged 30 to 34 have cohabited with a male partner, and two-thirds of new marriages take place between couples who have already lived together for an average of 31 months.”
Her new research found that previous studies have over-stated the divorce risk from premarital cohabitation by ignoring how old the individuals are when they move in together. She claims that the age when people move in together is a much more important factor than whether or not they have taken out a marriage license.
On average, she reported, cohabitors begin living together at an earlier age than couples who marry directly. But “when couples are compared by the age at which they move in together and start taking on the roles associated with marriage, there is no difference in divorce rates between couples that lived together before marriage and those that didn’t.”
Kuperberg stated that premarital cohabitation has very little, if any, impact on a couple’s chance of divorce. Rather, “early entry into marriage or cohabitation, especially prior to age 23, is the critical risk factor,” she said.
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