Co-habitation and marriage in Britain since the 1970s

19/07/13

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ons.gov.uk%2Fons%2Frel%2Fpopulation-trends-rd%2Fpopulation-trends%2Fno--145--autumn-2011%2Fard-pt145-cohab-marriage-trends.pdf&ei=1l_5UZDDI8Or0QX6kIGADw&usg=AFQjCNEuU6855JZRVliKZQ1dRlmj1AASiA&sig2=ObwIaawl14ja3jDJcCB0UQ&bvm=bv.49967636,d.d2k

Above is a link to the report 'Cohabitation and marriage in Britain since the 1970s' by Éva Beaujouan and Máire Ní Bhrolcháin of the ESPC Centre for Population Change, University of Southhamption (2011). The data has been sources from a consistent set of retrospective histories from the General Household Survey 1979-2007. 

There were fewer than one in a hundred adults under 50 estimated to be cohabiting at any one time in Britain during the early 1960s. (Murphy M. 2000. 'The evolution of cohabitation in Britain, 1960-95.' Population Studies 54: 43-56) 

Percentage of marriages preceded by premarital cohabitation, by age at and year of marriage, and sex. Great Britain, GHS 1979-2007:

Sourced: Beaujouan E. and Ní Bhrolcháin. 2011. 'Cohabitation and marriage in Britain since 1970s.' 

'The data above shows premarital cohabitation as extremely rare in the early 1960s, with less than 3% of those ages below 30 doing so. By the 1970s a quarter of men and women marrying at ages under 50 cohabited with their partner prior to marriage. According to GHS figures, it is since the late 1980s that more than half of all couples marrying have lived together beforehand, and so premarital cohabitation has been a majority practice for a quarter of a century. In recent years, the vast majority of people marrying at ages under 50 - close to four in five - have lived together prior to marriage. Indeed, marriage without first living together is now as unusual as premarital cohabitation was in the 1970s.'