Marriage's emotional benefits may not be as exclusive as people once believed as a new study suggests that moving in with a partner can provide the same level of happiness as married living.
When it comes to emotional health, young couples, especially women, do just as well moving in together as they do getting married, according to the Ohio State University study.
Using data collected in the 2000s, researchers found that single young women experienced a similar decline in emotional distress when they moved in with a romantic partner or when they went straight to marriage for the first time.
Men experienced a drop in emotional distress only when they went directly to marriage, not when they moved in with a romantic partner for the first time.
But for young adults who moved on from that first relationship, both men and women received similar emotional boosts whether they moved in with their second partner or got married to them.
The findings suggest an evolving role of marriage among young people today, said co-author Sara Mernitz.
The study appears online in the Journal of Family Psychology.
