Post: #1

This graph and variants on it have been circulating for a couple years:


It's a combo of a Heritage Foundation Study (http://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/2003/p...charts.pdf) and a research paper by Jay Teachman (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11...x/abstract) put together by the Social Pathologist (http://socialpathology.blogspot.com/). I was poking around and found a paper (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000053/) which more or less replicates the Teachman study but uses newer data (2002 vs 1995). The key finding, IMO:

For cohabitors in later marriage cohorts, the risk of marital dissolution is reduced by about 2% per year. This indicates that for marriages contracted before approximately 1993, premarital cohabitation is associated with an increased risk of marital dissolution; for later marriage cohorts, cohabitation is associated with a decreased risk. Both specifications interacting cohabitation with cohorts show that for more recent cohorts, cohabitation is not associated with higher rates of marital dissolution, and these cohort effects are statistically significant.

This is just investigating cohabitation vs non-cohabitation, not N, but this means that in terms of divorce risk, millennial girls who have cohabited with a guy are a better bet than those who haven't. Thought that was interesting.

Post: #2

Interesting.

I am still wondering who these virgin brides are.