Cohabitation Is No Longer Associated With Elevated Spousal Homicide Rates in the United States

Margo Wilson and collaborators discovered that cohabiting couples had very much higher spousal homicide rates than those in registered marriages, and cross-national research has shown this difference to be widespread. We now find that homicide rates in the two sorts of unions have converged in the United States, such that the previously large difference had completely vanished by 2005. Distinct age patterns whereby registered marriages are most …