The situation is especially bad in the United States

Dec 19, 2011 08:56 GMT  ·  By

As any half-decent statistic will tell you, the number of young couples who decide to get married is constantly dropping in the United States, and has been doing so for many years. According to a new research, the reason is extremely simple – young adults fear the high divorce rates.

The work was carried out by experts at the University of Central Oklahoma and Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, Science Blog reports. Investigators focused mostly on couple who were living together, since cohabitation is the most used avenue towards marriage.

Most often, test respondents cited the social, legal, emotional and economic repercussions of a divorce as the main reason for not getting married in the first place. In all, more than 67 percent of all people the researchers questioned said they feared divorce.