Manning et al 2019 young adult dating relationships

Among young women expecting to marry, the majority (68%) expect to cohabit with their future spouse but about one-third expect to follow a traditional relationship pathway into marriage (to marry without cohabiting first). there appears to be a ‘stalled’ Second Demographic Transition as single young adult (ages 18-24) women have stronger expectations to marry than cohabit and the vast majority expects to, or has, already married.

We capitalize on a new opportunity to examine both marital and cohabitation expectations among young single women in recently collected, nationally representative data (National Survey of Family Growth 2011-2015) ( n=1,467).

Cohabitation has surpassed marriage as the most common union experience in young adulthood.