Personal traits, cohabitation, and marriage

•We examine the effects of personal traits on romantic partner relationships.•We analyze a large sample of young adult men and women.•Personal traits include physical attractiveness, personality, and grooming.•The personal traits index affects marital relationships, but not cohabiting.•Individuals may be more discerning about marital offers than cohabiting offers.

This study examines how personal traits affect the likelihood of entering into a cohabitating or marital relationship using a competing risk survival model with cohabitation and marriage as competing outcomes. The data are from Waves 1, 3, and 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a rich dataset with a large sample of young adults (N = 9835). A personal traits index is constructed from interviewer-assessed scores on the respondents’ physical attractiveness, personality, and grooming. Having a higher score on the personal traits index is associated with a greater hazard of entering into a marital relationship for men and women, but the score does not have a significant influence on entering into a cohabitating relationship. Numerous sensitivity tests support the core findings.