Cohabitation Displacing Marriage

Updating a post from 2015.

In the last 10 years in the US, the proportion of adults under age 45 who are single (not living with a partner) has increased only about 1 point, to about 46%. Most of the 3-point drop in marriage has been replace by increasing cohabitation. Here are the trends, by age — men then women:

Here’s another way to look at it. Among those who are living with a partner, what percentage are cohabiting? The big change here is ages 22-29, where the percentage cohabiting increased by 14-19 percentage points. Both sexes combined:

Just a little update: Cohabitation displacing marriage, but not very rapidly. It remains a quiet period for changing marriage. (See this paper for my take on the declining metabolism of marriage).

Here’s the Stata code (so I can find the annoying syntax for these [by(x)] plots.)

Go get these variables from IPUMS CPS: year asecwt age sex marst popstat pecohab [people ages 20-44]

Then do this:

replace asecwt = int(asecwt100) / just so it’s integer */

gen cohab = pecohab>0
gen married = marst==1 & cohab==0
gen single = marst>1 & cohab==0

recode age (20/24=20) (25/29=25) (30/34=30) (35/44=35) , gen(agecat5)

label define ac 20 “Age 20-24”
label define ac 25 “Age 25-29”, add
label define ac 30 “Age 30-34”, add
label define ac 35 “Age 35-44”, add
label values agecat5 ac

save t, replace

/* three-cat trend */
use t, clear

keep if sex==2

collapse (mean) cohab married single [w=asecwt], by(agecat year)
lab var cohab “Cohabiting”
lab var married “Married”
lab var single “Single”

twoway scatter cohab married single year, s(none none none) c(L L L) ///
by(agecat, im(medium) cols(2) ///
title(“Partner status by age and year: USA WOMEN, 2007-2023”, size(3)) ///
legend(pos(3)) ///
note(“Civilian non-institutionalized population. PN Cohen analysis of CPS data via IPUMS.org.”, size(vsmall) span)) ///
subtitle(, span ring(1) nobexpand bc(%0) fc(none) pos(12) size(2.5)) ///
xlab(2007(4)2023, labsize(2)) xti(“”) yti(“”) ylab(0(.3).9, labsize(2) format(%2.1fc) grid gmax) ///
legend(col(1) size(2) region(ls(none) ))

/* cohab v. marriage trend */
use t, clear
keep if marst==1 | cohab==1
collapse (mean) cohab [w=asecwt], by(age year)

list, sep(0)

/* then I made the last graph in Excel */

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Previously Published on familyinequality with Creative Commons License

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