If couples do not get married then their wages do not have to combine and the EITC in a way is "paying for" low-income couples not to marry. Opponents of cohabitation believe that some cohabiting couples choose not to marry because they would suffer a tax penalty. Despite the perceived disincentive to marry that the EITC provides, cohabiting couples suffer many financial losses as their unions are not recognized with the same legal and financial benefits as those who are legally married. These financial penalties can include the costs of separate insurance policies and the costs of setting up legal protections similar to those that are automatically granted by the state upon marriage. No effect A conflicting study, published by the National Center for Health Statistics, with a sample of 12,571 people, concludes that "those who live together after making plans to marry or getting engaged have about the same chances of divorcing as couples who never cohabited before marriage." Additionally, William Doherty, a professor in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota has remarked that in his research he has found that "committed cohabiting relationships seem to confer many of the benefits of marriage." A 2003 study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies found that "The differences in measured outcomes for those from direct and indirect marriages appear to be entirely attributable to other factors." The study concluded that the evidence suggests that premarital cohabitation has "little impact one way or the other" on the chances of any subsequent marriage surviving. By region Americas Canada Canadian laws on the recognition of unmarried cohabitation for legal purposes vary significantly by province/territory; and in addition to this, federal regulations also have an impact across the country (see Common-law marriage#Canada). Family formation has undergone significant changes in Canada during the last decades of the 20th century, but the patterns vary widely across the country, suggesting differing cultural norms in different regions. From 1995, births to cohabiting parents have increased, particularly in Quebec. In Canada, it is difficult to obtain exact data on the percentage of births outside marriage, because data on the marital status of mothers is collected differently across the provinces and territories of Canada, and in some (such as Alberta) it is not broken down in detail in regard to whether the mother was legally married or not at the birth of her child. As