According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more Americans are skipping the walk down the aisle and choosing to just live together.
More than 12,000 women and 10,000 men between the ages of 15 and 44 took part in the survey between 2006 and 2010.
The stats
48% of women said that they were living with their significant other but were not married to them-compared to only 35% in 1995.
Only 23% of the women who answered the survey between 2006 and 2010 said they got married first, down from 39% in 1995.
40% of the women surveyed between 2006 and 2010, said their live-in relationships led to marriages, according to the study, but not everyone made it to the altar within three years of moving in together -- 32% of couples were still living together, and 27% of couples split up.
Women who dropped out of high school were most likely to move in with a boyfriend -- 70% said they had done so, the study found.
The research also showed that living together has become more common since 1995 for all ethnic and racial groups except Asians, and the older women got, the more likely they were to have tried it.
55% of women said they had lived with a boyfriend by age 25; 74% by the time those women turned 30.
Women living with their significant others are also more likely to get pregnant now than in years past, the study found. In 1995, only 15% of unmarried, cohabitating couples got pregnant; between 2006 and 2010, that figure was 19%.
Overall, getting pregnant was less likely to lead to marriage than in past years. In 1995, 32% of pregnancies led to marriages, the researchers reported. Between 2006 and 2010, only 19% of pregnancies prompted couples to get married.
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