Rebecca: How can the government or anyone else encourage people to make commitments?

Guy: For low income couples there's a small penalty for being married at the moment. One thing the government could do is at least remove that penalty in the tax and benefits system.

I also think that it's partly about getting information. We have this cultural belief that co-habitation is ok as a marriage substitute; that people have rights within co-habitations and that breaking up doesn't make any difference to people. I think one of the big myths out there is that common law marriage and couples who live together for a while have certain rights. They actually pretty much don't and there hasn't been such a thing as common-law marriage since the Marriage Act of 1753. Yet something like half of the population believes that if they live together they'll be treated like married couples if they separate. It's not true.

We need to raise awareness of the impact that separating from a co-habitation has. Most people do want to get married at some point. They value stable committed relationship; they value family; they want to get it right. It's ironic that one of the ways that they're trying to get it right at the moment is by living together to check their compatibilities with a trial marriage if you like.

Rebecca: Is the age people are when they get married a lot higher than it used to be?

Guy: I think it's about six years higher than it was in the eighties yes.

Rebecca: What will we be seeing in five or 10 years time with marriage and cohabitation do you think?

Guy: I think that we've had the sharp increase in co-habitations; it's up to about 85/90% of first living relationships. I think that's pretty much stabilised now. That can't realistically go much higher. I think they're going to continue to get longer, but that's also going to stabilise. We'll also see stabilisation in the marriage rate from those.

I suspect where things are going is a little bit more like Sweden actually, where co-habitation is very common. It's seen by the state as more similar to marriage. I think it's more recognised in the tax and benefits system. Couples tend to use marriage more as a way of recognising commitment at the birth of their first child, or after their first child. It's very possible that things will head more in that Scandinavian direction.

Rebecca: So do you think that the next generation will look at what's going on now and try and copy that or could they try and resort back to marriage?

Guy: That's a really good question. Unfortunately it's very hard to know what the next generation's going to do because you don't actually know what this generation's going to do until maybe 15 or 20 years down the line when you can see what happens to the marriages that are happening now.

We've broken down the data by years and looked right back to the sixties through to now. You don't know what's going to happen to the marriages that are happening now. It's this thing of past performance; there's no indication of future performance; just because one generation did something, it's not clear what people will do.