New Research
Cohabitation replacing marriage?
Archived article from Sep 26, 2005
By Ken Branson
The National Marriage Project at Rutgers has some good news and some bad news in its annual report, “The State of Our Unions 2005.” The divorce rate in the United States is dropping, but so is the marriage rate.
The number of unmarried couples living together increased tenfold between 1960 and 2000, the U.S. census says, with about 10 million people living with a partner of the opposite sex. That’s about 8 percent of U.S. coupled households. The data show that most unmarried partners who live together are between the ages of 25 and 34.
“More Americans are opting to stay single or live together instead of marrying,” said David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project and professor of sociology. Popenoe adds that cohabiting unions have a significantly higher break-up rate than marital unions, according to the report, released in July.
For a full picture of family stability, we need to go beyond the divorce rate, said co-director Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. “In the past, when marriage was the principal living-together partnership, the divorce rate was a pretty good measure of the stability of unions. Today, we need to look at the growing trend of cohabitation as well.”
Return to the Sep 26, 2005 issue
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