The overall aim of this study is to give greater visibility to the practice of people living together in Portugal and its processes of change over the past years. More specifically, we intend to analyse the phenomenon of cohabitation in its various forms, in an endeavour to determine the social profile of the actors concerned.
In order to do so, we resorted essentially to a quantitative approach, in order to determine the incidence and development of cohabitation in Portugal and the main socio-demographic characteristics of its leading figures.

keywords: marriage, cohabitation, conjugality, extra-marital births