PREMARITAL COHABITATION AND SUBSEQUENT MARITAL STABILITY IN THE UNITED-STATES - A REASSESSMENT

Data from a handful of studies suggest that at any given marital duration, premarital cohabitors have a higher risk of ending the first marriage. A recent study of the 1972 high school senior cohort suggests that this difference can be explained in the United States by the greater time cohabitors have spent in a union. This hypothesis was reinvestigated with a more broadly representative sample of the population. Consistent with results for Sweden, we found that cohabitation in the United States is associated with a greater hazard of dissolution even after counting the time spent in unmarried cohabitation as part of marital duration.