Cohabitation Experience and Cohabitation's Association With Marital Dissolution

Abstract

Background: Before data existed on premarital cohabitation and divorce, scholars assumed that the experience of premarital cohabitation would select compatible couples into marriage and lead to lower rates of divorce. The advent of data on premarital cohabitation and divorce overturned the early preconceptions, as premarital cohabitation was found to be associated with higher rates of divorce. Premarital cohabitation has risen dramatically in the United States. Scholars disagree about whether the divorce rates of premarital cohabiters and noncohabiters have converged. Method: A harmonized data set of 6 waves of the retrospective National Surveys of Family Growth (with 216,455 couple-years) is analyzed with discrete time-event history methods to predict marital dissolution. The data are nationally representative of women aged 44 years and younger in first marriages in the United States for 1970 to 2015. Different criteria for model selection are discussed. Results: The results show that in the first year of marriages, couples who cohabited before marriage have a lower marital dissolution rate than couples who did not cohabit before marriage, a difference that may be due to the practical experience of cohabitation, as couples who have cohabited learned to adapt to each other. We find that the association between marital dissolution and premarital cohabitation has not changed over time or across marriage cohorts. The benefits of cohabitation experience in the first year of marriage has misled scholars into thinking that the most recent marriage cohorts will not experience heightened marital dissolution due to premarital cohabitation. Conclusion: Premarital cohabitation has short-term benefits and longer term costs for marital stability.