Be patient, life’s milestones come later and later

LIFE’S milestones are happening later, the Office of National Statistics has reported.

It now takes longer for significant events – becoming parents or grandparents, divorcing, remarrying and retiring – to occur. The analysis comes after a similar pattern was established by the ONS among young people, who on average remained in education, bought their first home and had their first child later than older generations.

This week’s figures also revealed that men and women between 65 and 74 were happier than any other age group; happiness levels were at their lowest for those between 40 and 50.

Measures of personal well-being have only been recorded since 2011 and it is not known if future over-65s will hit similar happiness heights, but researchers said the current older generation felt more positive about their personal, social and financial lives.

The ONS said the average age of becoming a grandparent in 2017-18 was 63, three years later than 2009-10 – a knock-on effect of the long-term rise in the average age of parenthood.

The analysis also showed that people worked later in life than previously. From 1999 to 2019, the average age for stopping work rose from 61.7 to 64.7.

The ONS found the average age of divorce in 2018 was 46.9 for men and 44.5 years old for women, more than six years higher than in 1998. This could be a result of the trend of people getting married later and staying married longer, researchers said.

In England and Wales in 2018, the median length of marriage before divorce was 12.5 years, the longest duration since records began in 1963.

Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation, said marriages lasted longer because fewer wives filed for divorce in their first decade of married life.

“As social pressure to marry has steadily declined since the Nineties, and living together as an unmarried couple has become the norm, we think those men who do marry are taking their vows more seriously,” he said.

In 2016, the average remarrying age was 50.4 for men and 47.4 for women – eight years older than in 1998.

ONS analysis this year found the average age of first-time mothers was 29 – in 1999 it was 26.5 – with the age gap for having a second child shrinking to just over two years – from 29 to 31 now.