Background Before data existed on premarital cohabitation and divorce, scholars assumed that the experience of premarital cohabitation would select compatible couples into marriage and lead to lower rates of divorce. The advent of data on premarital cohabitation and divorce overturned the early preconceptions, as premarital cohabitation was found to be associated with higher rates of divorce. Premarital cohabitation has risen dramatically in the United States. Scholars disagree about whether the divorce rates of premarital cohabiters and noncohabiters have converged. Method A harmonized data set of 6 waves of the retrospective National Surveys of Family Growth (with 216,455 couple‐years) is analyzed with discrete time‐event history methods to predict marital dissolution. The data are nationally representative of women aged 44 years and younger in first marriages in the United States for 1970 to 2015. Different criteria for model selection are discussed. Results The results show that in the first year of marriages, couples who cohabited before marriage have a lower marital dissolution rate than couples who did not cohabit before marriage, a difference that may be due to the practical experience of cohabitation, as couples who have cohabited learned to adapt to each other. We find that the association between marital dissolution and premarital cohabitation has not changed over time or across marriage cohorts. The benefits of cohabitation experience in the first year of marriage has misled scholars into thinking that the most recent marriage cohorts will not experience heightened marital dissolution due to premarital cohabitation. Conclusion Premarital cohabitation has short‐term benefits and longer term costs for marital stability.

Assimilation theories posit that cultural change is part and parcel of the assimilation process. That change can register in the symbols and practices that individuals invoke as part of an ethnic experience. But cultural change also includes the degree to which the mainstream takes up those symbols and practices as part of its composite culture. We develop a way to examine whether cuisine, an important component of ethnic culture, is part of the mainstream’s composite culture and the contextual factors associated with the presence of ethnic cuisine in the composite culture. We begin with a comparison of 761,444 reviews of Mexican, Italian, Chinese, and American restaurants across the United States from Yelp!, an online customer review platform. We find that reviews of Mexican restaurants mention ethnicity and authenticity much more than reviews of Italian and American restaurants, but less than reviews of Chinese restaurants, suggesting intermediate mainstreaming of Mexican cuisine. We then examine Mexican restaurant reviews in the 82 largest U.S. core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) to uncover the contextual factors associated with Mexican cuisine’s local mainstream presence. We find that Mexican food is less defined in ethnic terms in CBSAs with larger and more culturally distinct Mexican populations and at less-expensive restaurants. We argue that regional versions of the composite culture change as ethnic groups come to define a region demographically and culturally.

ObjectiveOur goal is to show how premarital cohabitation's association with marital dissolution can be measured consistently over time.BackgroundRosenfeld and Roesler (2019) showed that premarital cohabitation led to lower rates of marital dissolution early in marital duration, but higher rates of marital dissolution after a few years of marital duration. Analysis based on marriage cohorts can erroneously appear to show that the association between premarital cohabitation and marital dissolution has disappeared in the most recent cohort.MethodWe use discrete time event history models to study the association between premarital cohabitation and marital dissolution across calendar time and across marriage cohorts, with data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). We examine a variety of modeling strategies and data filters including those in Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg's (MSK) comment to show how different data and modeling choices can bias the results.ResultsMSK's analysis rests on simple misunderstandings of our models. MSK discarded more than 70% of the valid couple years available in the NSFG data, and then used the resulting lower statistical power to declare a key interaction insignificant. MSK treat children as a time‐invariant variable despite the fact that the presence of children changes over the course of relationships. MSK discard one wave of the data without explanation. All of these choices affect the outcome.ConclusionOur prior result stands: premarital cohabitation consistently predicts higher rates of marital dissolution in the U.S. Research into marital dissolution should be made more robust, transparent, and replicable.

ObjectiveOur goal is to measure change over time in the predictors of marital dissolution in the United States.BackgroundThe last comprehensive comparative analysis of predictors of marital dissolution is more than 20 years out of date. Rising inequality in the United States requires a fresh look at the predictors of marital dissolution. The Diverging Destinies hypothesis predicts greater inequality over time in the divorce rate between groups, whereas the Converging Destinies hypothesis predicts convergence in divorce rates.MethodWe use a variety of event history models to examine the change over time in race, ethnicity, intermarriage, premarital cohabitation, education, teen marriages, and family of origin intactness as predictors of marital dissolution using data on first marriages from the National Survey of Family Growth covering seven decades of marital histories. We examine racial differences in the nonracial predictors of divorce.ResultsIn the post‐Civil Rights era, Black women's and White women's marital dissolution rates converged. In the most recent marriage cohorts, marital dissolution rates for Black women have increased relative to White women and teen marriage is increasingly associated with divorce. Women without the BA degree appear to be increasingly at risk for divorce. We find that wives from racial minority groups have divorce rates that are less impacted by premarital cohabitation, low education, and teen marriage.ConclusionThe demographic profile of women at marriage has changed dramatically, while the predictors of divorce have changed modestly. Where there are changes in the predictors of divorce, we find more support for Diverging Destinies.