NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New study findings show that marriage is indeed a tie that binds--or at least binds a bit tighter than cohabitation without matrimony.

Couples who live together without marriage are twice as likely to split up 5 years after they move in together than couples who tie the knot, according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

And similar to past research, the survey found that couples who lived together before marriage were also more likely to split than those who waited until after they got hitched.

The report is based on a 1995 survey of nearly 11,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44.

Lead author Dr. Matthew D. Bramlett of the NCHS in Hyattsville, Maryland and his team hoped to learn more about cohabitation and marriage and the factors that influence the success or failure of these types of relationships.

"Marriages tend to last longer than cohabitations," he told Reuters Health. Roughly 5 years after women got married, only 20% had left their husbands, versus 49% of women who were living with someone.

"We don't have any underlying reasons to explain the findings," said Bramlett, who noted that the group solely tried to describe as many different characteristics associated with outcomes to marriage and cohabitation "to encourage further research."

The report, "Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States," is posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Web site.

In other findings, the researchers learned that women whose parents split when they were young were much more likely to follow in their footsteps.

Ten years after being married, 43% of women from broken homes reported having left the marriage versus 29% of women raised in intact families.

"The same trend held true for a woman's second marriage," with 49% of women from broken homes separated or divorced compared with 33% of women whose parents stayed married, Bramlett told Reuters Health.

"We need to find a way to break the cycle of family instability," Bramlett said.

Reference Source 89

For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".