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Results from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth indicate that marriages contracted after 1980 are becoming more stable. This article examines several individual characteristics in search of an explanation for increasing stability. A person-year file is created and logistic regression is used to determine which covariates account for the negative effect of year in a model predicting the likelihood of marital dissolution. Increasing experience of premarital sex, premarital birth, cohabitation, and racial and religious heterogamy are detracting from marital stability. However, rising age at marriage and, to a lesser degree, increased education are associated with increasing marital stability. These latter effects more than counterbalance the factors associated with instability leading to an overall decline in the rate of marital dissolution.

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Previous studies have indicated a relationship between religious homogamy and marital satisfaction and stability. However, most have emphasized denominational affiliation only. Using loglinear analysis of national survey data, this study tested the effects of three types of religious homogamy - namely denominational affiliation, church attendance, and belief in the Bible - upon marital satisfaction and stability. Results indicated that denominational affiliation homogamy is the most critical, with church attendance homogamy contributing slightly to marital success. Similar beliefs about the Bible did not have a statistically significant association with either marital satisfaction or marital stability.

Although there is evidence that the number and ages of children influence marital stability, studies have not systematically tracked the risk of marital disruption throughout the child-rearing years. This study uses marital and fertility histories from the June 1985 Current Population Survey to examine this issue. Continuous-time regression models with ages and numbers of children as time-varying covariates are estimated. Net of controls for age at marriage, year of marriage, education, and marital duration, stability increases with family size up to the third child but starts to decline as family size reaches five or more children. Aging of children is disruptive until the youngest child reaches adulthood, after which marriages become much more stable. Arrival and aging of children is an important dynamic with strong implications for marital stability.