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Fifty per cent couples in the US are choosing to live together before they are married and forty per cent of them end up tying the knot, according to new research.
The number of women who move in before marriage has increased across all race groups, except for Asian women, the study by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found.
Researchers found that between 2006 and 2010, about half of women included in the study had lived in with a partner before getting married, versus 43 per cent in 2002 and 34 per cent in 1995.
The relationships might even be better for it as 40 per cent of those women ended up married within three years and one in five became pregnant, New York Daily News reported.
The amount of time couples live together before marriage has also increased - from an average of 13 months in 1995 to 22 months in 2006-2010.
Education plays a big part in cohabitation, according to the study. Seventy per cent of women without a high school diploma moved in before marriage, versus 47 per cent of women with at least a bachelor's degree.
Experts said the data reflects on looser attitudes about marriage and having children out-of-wedlock.
Twenty-three per cent women said marriage was their first time living with a partner.
Researchers based their findings on more than 12,000 interviews of women aged 15-44, between 2006 and 2010.
