COHABITATION AND THE RISK OF DIVORCE - AN EMPIRICAL-STUDY

Cohabitation causes a decrease in marriage rates as well as later aver age ages of marriage. These phenomena, which are attracting increasing public attention, raise the question of whether the risk of a divorce is reduced by preceding cohabitation. According to the ''weeding'' hy pothesis this is the case because instable relationships can be termin ated before marriage. However, in the case of Germany this question is still unresolved and the empirical evidence from various countries se ems to demonstrate that the opposite is true: Premarital cohabitation usually leads to a higher risk of divorce. The goal of this study is t o lest the ''weeding'' hypothesis by using recently collected data on divorce in Germany. First, the analysis shows that couples cohabiting before marriage are usually prone to a higher risk of divorce. This is due to several personal trails connected to a preference for premarit al cohabitation, which lead to a higher risk of divorce. The second fi nding is that cohabitation of less than one year is not able to compen sate for this inherently higher risk of divorce. However, cohabitation which lasts at least one year does not have any destabilizing effects on the succeeding marriage.