Couples that live together before marrying are no more likely to divorce than those that don't according to a recent study. The widely held belief has been dispelled following the results of research conducted at the University of North Carolina confirmed that there is no discernable link between cohabitation and divorce. The study’s author, Arielle Kuperberg, utilised data on more than 7,000 people, all of whom had been married at least once, gathered during government surveys conducted in 1995, 2002 and 2006. The data stated when these individuals had begun living with their partners along with if and when they divorced. Having analysed these statistics, Kuperberg noted that previous studies had failed to consider the parties’ ages when they began cohabiting and only considered whether the couples had cohabited before marrying only. Following her having controlled for age, she observed that cohabitation before marriage alone was not a precursor to divorce. Instead of divorce being more likely when couples move in together before marriage, couples that move in together at a young age (i.e. before they both reach 23) are more likely to find that they will divorce should they later marry one another. Kuperberg has posited that this may be due to the fact that younger people may not yet have set career paths and that this may lead to them eventually needing to live apart or suffering economic hardship. Premarital cohabitation has been on the rise in the US for several years. A 2010 study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that, in 2010, 75 per cent of women aged 30 and younger had lived with a partner at some point. In comparison, this figure stood at 70 per cent in 2002 and 65 per cent in 1995. Furthermore, this study revealed that 23 per cent of women were married when they first moved in with a partner in 2010, down from 30 per cent in 2002 and 39 per cent in 1995. This study also found that couples that do cohabit before marrying are waiting longer before tying the knot; couples waited for an average of 13 months in 1995 compared with 22 in 2010.