The States Where Living Together Is the New Normal: where is cohabitation most common?

Across the U.S., cohabitation increased much faster than marriage from 2014 to 2024: unmarried-couple households rose from 7.2 million to nearly 9.6 million, and cohabiting households grew faster than married households in 50 of the 51 state-level areas examined. The District of Columbia had the highest share of couples living together without marrying in 2024 at 24.3% (up from 19.8% in 2014). Vermont followed at 20.0%, and New Mexico, Nevada, and Rhode Island were between about 17.0% and 17.5%.

Are young adults moving in before they say "I do"?

Yes. According to the page’s review of Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family & Marriage Research data, living with an unmarried partner became more common than living with a spouse among adults ages 18 to 24 starting in 2018 and continued through 2024. In 2024, about 9% of adults ages 18 to 24 lived with an unmarried partner, compared with 7% who lived with a spouse. In 2024, 12.3% of adults ages 18 to 34 lived with an unmarried partner, compared with 6.9% of adults ages 35 to 64.

Where are unmarried parents raising children?

In 2024, the page estimates about 6.2 million children under 18 lived with unmarried couples (about one in 12 children). Among the metros discussed, Fresno, California had the highest share of cohabiting couples raising children at 51.5%, followed by Riverside–San Bernardino at 44.7% and Houston at 39.7%. Los Angeles had the largest number of cohabiting couples raising children, with nearly 119,000 households (about one-third of its cohabiting-couple households).

Why are more older Americans living together unmarried?

The page explains that later-life cohabitation is rising and is often a deliberate choice: older adults who are widowed or divorced may want companionship without risking their home, retirement savings, or other assets they hope to leave to adult children. In 2024, about 1.55 million Americans age 65 and older lived with an unmarried partner (2.6% of older adults). From 2009 to 2024, the share of unmarried women in this age group living with a partner doubled, while the rate for unmarried men increased by more than 40%.

Cohabitation Nation: Unmarried Couples Dominate the U.S.

Q: What is the 18-month relationship turning point for cohabiting couples?

The page reports (based on its review of a 2026 Pew Research Center analysis) that the median time couples spend living together before getting married or splitting up is 18 months. It also notes that only 26% of adults have lived with an unmarried partner for five years or more. Among adults in their early forties who have lived with a partner, 67% went on to marry someone they lived with (and 70% of those married their first live-in partner), while 28% had never married.

Marriage is no longer the default for U.S. couples moving in together. From the Midwest to the Mountain West, cohabitation is growing faster than marriage, reshaping families, and becoming increasingly common at every stage of life.

Envision Family Law’s analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data from 2014 to 2024, alongside recent national research on relationships and family formation, reveals a country where living together without marrying has moved well beyond the margins. In some places, it is now a defining feature of modern relationships. In others, the numbers are rising quickly, even where marriage remains the norm.

Welcome to Cohabitation Nation, where sharing an address increasingly comes before (or instead of) sharing a marriage certificate.

The States Where Living Together Is the New Normal

Across the U.S., cohabitation has grown more than three times as fast as marriage over the past decade. The number of unmarried-couple households rose from 7.2 million in 2014 to nearly 9.6 million in 2024. Cohabiting households grew faster than married households in 50 of the 51 state-level areas examined. But the trend is more established in some places than others.

The District of Columbia has the highest share of couples living together without getting married, at 24.3%, compared with 19.8% in 2014. Vermont follows at 20%, while New Mexico, Nevada, and Rhode Island aren’t far behind, with rates between 17% and 17.5%. It’s clear that cohabitation isn’t just a big-city thing or something mainly seen along the coasts. More couples are choosing to live together across the country, including in New England and the upper Midwest.

Vermont has seen the largest increase in cohabitation share, rising six percentage points from 14.0% to 20.0%. Its cohabiting households grew 56.9% over the decade, compared with just 2.3% growth in married-couple households.

Alaska stands alone as the only state-level area where married-couple households grew faster than cohabiting households. Its cohabitation share also fell from 14.8% to 14.1%.

Young Adults Are Moving In Before They Say “I Do”

In 2018, living with an unmarried partner became more common than living with a spouse among adults aged 18 to 24, a pattern that continued through 2024. That year, 9% lived with an unmarried partner, compared with 7% who lived with a spouse, according to our review of Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family & Marriage Research.

In 2024, 12.3% of adults ages 18 to 34 lived with an unmarried partner, compared with just 6.9% of those ages 35 to 64. Younger adults also made up a large share of people living with an unmarried partner. Nearly 9 million of the 19.3 million Americans in this group were between 18 and 34, even though they account for only about 28% of the adult population.

Marriage remains part of young adulthood: about 23% of adults aged 18 to 34 live with a spouse. But the numbers suggest that marriage is no longer the automatic starting point for a serious relationship.

In cities like Rochester, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh, young adults are much more likely than average to live with a partner without getting married. For many couples, moving in together is becoming a natural first step in building a life together, with marriage coming later or not at all.

Unwed and Unbothered: The Cities Leading the Cohabitation Boom in the U.S.

The trend is just as clear when you look at cities and their surrounding areas. Across 367 metro areas with data for both 2014 and 2024, unmarried couples made up 13.5% of coupled households in 2024, up from 11.5% a decade earlier. Cohabiting households also grew faster than married households in 319 of those areas, meaning the same pattern showed up in nearly nine out of 10 metros.

Among the 53 largest metro areas in the U.S., Las Vegas has the highest share of unmarried couples, at 17.6% of all coupled households. Milwaukee comes next at 17.2%, followed by Rochester and Providence at 16.9% each and Buffalo at 16.5%. Portland, Miami, Tucson, Fresno, and Louisville round out the top 10.

The numbers look a little different in some of the country’s biggest coastal cities. The New York metro area has the most households made up of unmarried couples, at around 464,000, but they account for just 12.2% of all coupled households, putting the metro at 43rd place.

Chicago ranks 33rd at 13%, while Washington, D.C., comes in at 50th with 11.2%. That’s a notable contrast with the District of Columbia itself, which has the highest cohabitation rate in the country.

Los Angeles stands out among the coastal giants, ranking 13th with a 15.0% cohabitation share and approximately 365,500 unmarried-couple households, second only to New York.

Milwaukee Takes the Crown for Cohabitation Growth

Looking at both prevalence and growth, Milwaukee tops the Cohabitation Nation Index, according to our findings. Its cohabitation share rose from 12.4% in 2014 to 17.2% in 2024, a 4.7-percentage-point increase. Unmarried-couple households grew 43.4%, from about 39,400 to 56,500, while married-couple households fell 1.7%.

Milwaukee is one of only two large metros where married-couple households declined. In Hartford, Connecticut, married households fell 2.8%, while cohabiting households grew 23.6%.

Providence, Buffalo, and Rochester follow Milwaukee on the index, each recording gains of around three percentage points or more. Miami ranks fifth, with unmarried-couple households growing 50.3% to nearly 198,000 (about three times the growth in married households). Seattle ranks sixth, as its cohabitation share rose from 12.4% to 15.2% and unmarried-couple households grew 46.6%, reaching roughly 141,600.

Seattle also has a relatively low share of cohabiting couples raising children: just 20.0% have their own children under 18 at home, compared with roughly three in 10 in Milwaukee, Miami, and Louisville. Birmingham, Alabama, has the lowest cohabitation share among the largest metros, at 9.2%. Dallas-Fort Worth, San Jose, Washington, D.C., Grand Rapids, and Atlanta also rank near the bottom.

Still, cohabitation is growing faster than marriage even in these metros. The trend is widespread, even where unmarried couples remain a smaller share of households.

The 18-Month Relationship Turning Point

More Americans are moving in together without getting married, but not every couple plans to walk down the aisle. Our review of a 2026 Pew Research Center analysis found that 77% of adults have lived with an unmarried partner by their early forties. More than one in three have lived with two or more partners at different points in their lives.

These arrangements don’t always last, either. The median time couples spend living together before getting married or splitting up is 18 months, and only 26% of adults have lived with an unmarried partner for five years or more. These numbers refer to how long couples live together, not necessarily how long their relationships last.

For many, cohabitation is a step toward marriage. Among adults in their early forties who have lived with a partner, 67% went on to marry someone they lived with, and 70% of those married their first live-in partner. Still, 28% of cohabiters in this age group had never married.

Nearly 9.6 million unmarried couples across the country now share a home. Many also share bills, finances, and family responsibilities, but they may not have the same legal protections as married couples. Whether they stay together for decades or go their separate ways after 18 months, there are legal and financial issues they might not have considered.

A Closer Look at Unwed Couples: Education, Race, and Age

Cohabitation spans generations, educational backgrounds, and racial and ethnic groups, though couples’ experiences differ. According to our analysis of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the share of American adults living with an unmarried partner rose from 3.7% in 1996 to 9.1% in 2023, while the married share fell from 55.9% to 46.4%. Based on our review of the existing data, Penn Wharton projects that cohabitation could exceed 16% by 2040.

Education Shapes the Cohabitation Story

Education appears to play a part in whether people live together before marriage or without marrying at all. Our review of Pew Research Center’s 2026 analysis found that by their early forties, 82% of adults with a high school education or less had lived with an unmarried partner. The rate was 78% among those with some college education and 70% among college graduates.

What happens after moving in together also varies. Among adults who had cohabited, 77% of college graduates married a live-in partner, compared with 59% of those with a high school education or less.

Longer relationships were more common among those without college experience: 34% of cohabiters with a high school education or less had lived with a partner for at least five years, compared with 17% of college graduates. They were also more likely to move in with their first partner before age 20 (40%, versus 12% of college graduates).

Cohabitation Crosses Racial and Ethnic Lines

Our review of Pew’s research found that by their early forties, 79% of White adults, 74% of Hispanic adults, and 71% of Black adults had lived with a partner without getting married. The numbers looked different when it came to marriage later on. About 73% of White adults who had lived with a partner went on to marry someone they lived with, compared with 59% of Hispanic adults and 46% of Black adults.

Nearly half of Black adults who had cohabited (48%) had never married, compared with 35% of Hispanic adults and 22% of White adults. Hispanic adults were most likely to report a cohabiting relationship lasting at least five years, at 35%, compared with 24% of White adults and 26% of Black adults.

For some couples, moving in together is a step toward marriage. Others choose to stay together without getting married. This is especially common among same-sex couples. In 2024, around 551,000 same-sex couples in the U.S. lived together without being married. Nearly 40% weren’t married, which is about three times the rate for couples overall.

The Peak Age for Living Together Is Getting Older

Cohabitation is becoming more common, and the age at which it peaks is shifting. Based on our review of the presented data, Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family & Marriage Research found that the age when Americans were most likely to live with an unmarried partner rose from 25 in 2012 to 28 in 2022. At that age, cohabitation prevalence increased from 17.6% to 19.7% (nearly one in five 28-year-olds).

Adults between 25 and 29 saw the biggest jump in cohabitation rates, from 15.5% to 19%. Rates also went up among people in their teens and early twenties, thirties, and forties. These numbers show the ages when living with an unmarried partner was most common, not necessarily when people first moved in together.

Living together without getting married is becoming more common among older Americans as well. The number of people living with an unmarried partner went from around 14 million in 2009 to 20.3 million in 2024, and older adults saw the biggest jump.

Unwed Couples Are Raising Millions of American Children

For millions of American children, living with parents who aren’t married is just part of everyday life. In 2024, about 6.2 million kids under 18 lived with unmarried couples. That’s roughly one in 12 children. Around two-thirds lived with married parents, while one in four lived with a single parent.

Having children outside marriage is common as well. Unmarried mothers accounted for 39.5% of births in the U.S. in 2024, or about 1.43 million babies. Not all of these mothers lived with a partner, but the numbers show that families are finding different ways to build their lives together.

Education also seems to influence how people start families. Among women having their first child without a bachelor’s degree, the share who lived with a partner without being married rose from 19.2% in the early 1990s to 34.8% in 2020–2024.

Over the same period, the share who were married when their first child was born fell from 58.6% to 40.6%. Cohabitation among Hispanic first-time mothers rose from 20.4% to 34.0%, while the rate among White first-time mothers increased from 14.5% to 20.2%.

From 2020 to 2024, 84.5% of women with a bachelor’s degree or higher were married when they had their first child, compared with 74.4% around 30 years earlier. Women with college degrees are more likely to be married when they have their first child, while those without a degree are more likely to live with a partner without getting married.

Where Unmarried Parents Are Raising Children

Fresno, California, had the highest share among the metros examined, at 51.5%, followed by Riverside-San Bernardino at 44.7% and Houston at 39.7%. Los Angeles had the largest number of cohabiting couples raising children, with nearly 119,000 households (about one-third of its cohabiting-couple households).

At the other end, fewer than one in five cohabiting couples had children at home in Salt Lake City and Denver. Seattle’s share was 20.0%. These differences show that cohabitation can mean raising children together in one metro and primarily sharing a home without children in another.

Shared Lives, Different Legal Rules

When unmarried couples buy a home, share money, or raise kids together, not being married can make a difference legally.

Unmarried parents may not have the same automatic legal rights as married parents. Depending on the state and the situation, a father may need to establish paternity before he can claim certain parental rights. Parents may also need to make formal arrangements for custody, parenting time, and child support.

When an unmarried partner dies, the surviving partner doesn’t have the same rights to their money, retirement benefits, or property as a spouse would. If you own a home together or share big expenses, an agreement in writing can help avoid confusion later.

Silver Shack-Ups: Why More Older Americans Are Living Together Unmarried

Cohabitation isn’t just something younger people do. In 2024, about 1.55 million Americans aged 65 and older lived with an unmarried partner, making up 2.6% of older adults. From 2009 to 2024, the share of unmarried women in this age group living with a partner doubled, while the rate for unmarried men increased by more than 40%.

For many older adults, staying unmarried is a conscious decision. People who are widowed or divorced may want a partner to share life with without putting their home, retirement savings, or assets they hope to leave their adult children at risk. Past marriages are common, too. Both partners had been married before in 55% of cohabiting couples aged 50 and older. Among older married couples, 59% were in their first marriage.

Older cohabiters were also less likely than married couples to both hold college degrees and more likely to have neither partner hold one. Their average age gap was seven years, compared with four years among married couples.

Where Older Couples Are Most Likely to Cohabit

Rochester, New York, has the highest rate of older adults living with an unmarried partner among large metro areas. About 4.2 out of every 100 residents aged 65 and older live with a partner without being married, compared with 2.6 nationwide. Rochester also ranks first for cohabitation among young adults.

In Tampa–St. Petersburg and Miami–Fort Lauderdale, 3.9 out of every 100 residents aged 65 and older live with an unmarried partner. Las Vegas and Tucson also rank near the top, along with Boston, Portland, and Indianapolis. Living together without getting married later in life isn’t just common in sunny retirement destinations.

By total numbers, New York leads with approximately 86,000 cohabiting adults aged 65 and older, followed by Los Angeles with 49,000 and Miami with 47,800.

Some smaller retirement communities have especially high concentrations of older cohabiters. In Punta Gorda, Florida, 39.2% of people living with an unmarried partner were aged 65 or older, the highest share among U.S. metros. Cape Coral-Fort Myers followed at 25.1%. Later-life cohabitation challenges the idea that moving in together is primarily a young couple’s milestone.

America’s Definition of Commitment Is Changing

From young couples sharing their first home to parents raising children and retirees finding companionship, cohabitation has become a lasting part of American family life. Our experienced Washington domestic partnership lawyers help couples understand their legal rights and options as they build a life together.

More Americans are moving in with their partners without getting married, though how common it is depends on where they live, their age, education, and family situation. Some couples eventually get married, while others are content to stay unmarried.

Living together without getting married is already common in some cities and is becoming more popular in others. It’s a sign that people’s ideas about relationships and commitment are changing.

Some couples move in together because they hope to get married eventually. Others are happy staying unmarried. More people are sharing a home, raising kids, and planning a future together without feeling that marriage has to be part of the picture.

Unwed & Unbothered in America