The Love Boat Hits Rough Waters

Federal report on marriage and cohabitation finds fewer happy endings

WEDNESDAY, July 24, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Living together without being married is less stable than being married, new government statistics show.

While there's a 20 percent probability that a first marriage will end in separation or divorce within five years, the chances of a cohabitation hitting the skids in the same amount of time is 49 percent, a report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concludes.

The report, examining trends and patterns in marriage, divorce and cohabitation in the United States, was based on interviews with almost 11,000 women and girls between 15 and 44 years old.

By the time they reach the age of 30, 75 percent of American women have been married and about half of them have lived with someone outside of marriage, the research found.

"We've expanded our analysis beyond the basic 'bookends' of marriage and divorce to look more closely at how the issue of cohabitation impacts the life of a relationship," says Dr. Ed Sondik, director of the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.

"At the same time, we've also attempted to look beyond the influence of individual characteristics and are looking more at the characteristics of the community at large to get a comprehensive picture of what factors impact marriage and divorce rates in this country," Sondik says in a prepared statement.

The report found that after a decade, there's a 33 percent a first marriage will fail, compared to 62 percent for cohabitations.

It also found certain factors affecting women may lead to a longer-lasting marriage or cohabitation.

These include: the woman's age when she gets married or starts living with a partner; whether she had a two-parent family during her childhood; religious influence; and whether she comes from a higher income family or from a community that had high median family income, low poverty and low male unemployment rates.

Marriages that sputter don't always end in divorce, the report says. It found 91 percent of separated white women divorce their husbands after three years of separation, compared to 77 percent of separated Hispanic women and 67 percent of separated black women.

Overall, the probability of remarriage for divorced women is 54 percent in five years, a percentage that has declined since the 1950s, when it was 65 percent. That also varies according to race -- 58 percent for white women, 44 percent for Hispanics and 32 percent for blacks.

However, the report adds, the probability that a second marriage will fail is 23 percent after five years and 39 percent after 10 years.

More information

For a description of how divorce can affects your child, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has this advice.

Related Stories

No stories found.
logo
www.healthday.com