Cohabiting Parents Now Account For A Clear Majority Of All Births Outside Marriage

From The Wall Street Journal, "Cohabiting Parents at Record High: Sociologists fret that more children risk losing out on the economic benefits of living in married households" by Neil Shah:

Just over a quarter of births to women of child-bearing age—defined here as 15 to 44 years old—in the past five years were to cohabiting couples, the highest on record and nearly double the rate from a decade earlier, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2011 to 2013.

By contrast, the share of births involving women who are unmarried and not cohabiting fell slightly over the same period, data from the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth show.

The result: Cohabiting parents now account for a clear majority—59%—of all births outside marriage, according to estimates by Sally Curtin, a CDC demographer. In all, 40% of the 3.93 million births in 2013 were to unmarried women.

Source: The Wall Street Journal