The relationship between premarital cohabitation and marital stability: Evidence for Swedish men born in 1936-1960

In recent years, the incidence of premarital cohabitation has increased dramatically in many countries of Western Europe and in the U.S .. In view of such developments, it is natural to raise issues related to the relationship between premarital cohabitation and the stability of subsequent marriages. The present paper examines such a relationship with reference to Swedish men born in 1936-1960. The data for the analyses come from the 1985 .survey of Swedish males, which had about 3200 respondents. Multiplicative hazard models are used to estimate relative risks of marital dissolution and thereby test several hypotheses in connection with the effect of premarital cohabitation and other background factors, on the stability of subsequent marriages. Consistent with, but stronger than in earlier findings, the results show that previous cohabitors, compared to noncohabitors tend to be at much greater differential risk of dissolution at all durations of marriage. In addition, we found that age at marriage, marriage duration, and child (ren) are among the strongest determinants of the risk of marital dissolution.