The Ups and Downs of Cohabitation: How Partnership Status Affects Lifespan

Ever wondered if being married really does make you live longer? Well, research has often shown that, yeah, it does. But what about folks who are in non-marital cohabitation—is their mortality rate somewhere in between married and single folks? Sweden, being a leader in family trends, decided to find out. Using data from 2012 to 2017, researchers looked at a huge group of over 5 million people to see how different partnership statuses affect lifespan.They found that cohabiters are a diverse bunch. Never-married cohabiters had similar risks to married couples when young, but that risk increased with age. On the flip side, divorced and widowed cohabiters showed an opposite pattern—their risk decreased with age. So, it's clear that the context of cohabitation can change as we go through life. Future research should dive into this more to understand these patterns better.