Marriage on the up again after 40 years of decline
THE popularity of marriage is rising again after 40 years of decline, official figures revealed yesterday.
They showed the proportion of adults who are married has started creeping up from the historic low at the beginning of this decade.
In 2011, married men and women were almost a minority in England and Wales at just 50.7 per cent of the adult population. However last year 51.2 per cent of people over the age of 16 were found to have tied the knot.
The Office for National Statistics said the share of the population that is married has been ‘stabilising over the last three years’.
Explanations for the trend include suggestions that partnerships are increasingly stable because couples are choosing to marry later. Official recognition of socalled ‘pre-nup’ deals is also thought to have had an effect, as it means couples are more willing to risk a wedding.
Other factors could include the impact of immigration, which is bringing into the country people with a greater attachment to marriage than many of the existing population. The latest ONS figures are based on the large-scale Labour Force Survey, as well as the 2011 national census. They showed there were 23,837,253 married peo- ple in England and Wales last year among a total population of around 57million. This is around 1,643,000 higher than earlier figures. Yet in 1972 there were around 25,095,000 married men and women among a population ten million lower.
Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation think-tank, said: ‘One of the paradoxes of our modern approach to marriage is that marrying later on tends to be more successful. Inertia [also] plays a big part in making older marriages work.’ But he added: ‘It is quite possible the apparently benign trend in marriage is flattered by large numbers of married immigrants.’
Alongside the rise in formal partnerships, the report also found that cohabitation continues to grow in popularity. The under- 30s are increasingly likely to cohabit rather than tie the knot, and less than a quarter of all those aged between 25 and 30 were in marriages last year.
The ONS said: ‘In 2002 people who were cohabiting but had never married represented 6.8 per cent of the population. This increased to 9.1 per cent by 2014.’
Family lawyer James Brown, from JMW Solicitors, agreed that a 2010 Supreme Court ruling in favour of pre-nuptial contracts may have had an effect. He said the rise in the proportion of married people ‘coincides with the lessons of the ruling being taken on board by people keen to go through with marriage’.
The halt in the decline of formal partnerships follows David Cameron’s launch of a small tax break for married couples this year.