Serial cohabiters less likely to marry
Those who have cohabited with more than one partner are less likely to marry than are those who have cohabited with only one partner. Moreover, if serial cohabiters do marry, their marriages are more than twice as likely to end in divorce.
Daniel T. Lichter of Cornell University and Zhenchao of Ohio State University used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to track the experiences of serial cohabiters, or women who have cohabited with more than one partner.
Serial cohabiters were less likely than couples who cohabited only once to end in marriage. If serial cohabiters did marry, divorce rates were very high – more than twice as high as for women who cohabited only with their eventual husbands.
Results indicate that only a minority of cohabiting women (15 to 20 percent) were involved in multiple cohabitations. Also, serial cohabitations were overrepresented among economically disadvantaged groups, especially those with low income and education.
Previous research has shown that cohabiting relationships are far less stable than marriage and that married people are healthier than cohabiting couples.
The paper has been published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. The abstract is posted here, but the full text is behind a subscriber wall.