Premarital Cohabitation, Marital Dissolution, and Marital Quality in China

Using data from the 2018 Chinese Family Panel Studies, this study examines the associations between premarital cohabitation, marital satisfaction, and the probability of a subsequent divorce and captures the gradated variations of marital quality by incorporating divorce and self-rated marital satisfaction into a generic measure of marital quality. Findings show positive associations between cohabitation and divorce and negative associations between cohabitation and marital quality. Results further show that the negative association between cohabitation and marital quality is weakened by better education, higher income, and rural origin, and stronger among men. The consistent negative associations between cohabitation and all the marital quality outcomes indicate the persistent strength of the norm of universal marriage, based on which cohabitation is still considered substantively distinct from marriage both in terms of legal status and social recognition. The diverse social gradients of the cohabitation-marital quality links reflect the heterogeneous social meanings of cohabitation in contemporary China.