COMMENTARY BY Caitlin Thomas Caitlin Thomas is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. More young adults are opting to cohabit rather than marry or to delay marriage for financial reasons, such as debt, according to a recent study published in Demography. However, National Marriage Week presents a good opportunity to review how rigorous, long-term studies have measured the substantial impact of marriage on financial stability, as well as relationship longevity and health outcomes. Here are five additional facts you may not know about cohabitation: 1. Cohabiting couples are more prone to break up (and break up for good) than married couples. In the May 2003 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family Study, Georgina Binstock and Arland Thornton found that, in the first year of living together, couples who cohabited were eight times more likely to end their relationships than those who were married. In the second and third years, those rates decreased to
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