Late last week the future of marriage in this country was questioned in parts of the media as the general marriage rate fell to an all-time low.  In 2010, there were 12.5 marriages for every 1000 people who weren’t married, the lowest rate since records began in the early 1960s.  (The Statistics New Zealand report can be found here.) The absolute number marriages last year was 20,940, less than 2009, but not the lowest number ever recorded, contrary to what the media breathlessly reported. (By my count there were eleven years since 1992 which recorded fewer marriages than in 2010.)

However, the fact remains that marriages have become less common in NZ over the past forty years; that the median age at which people are getting married has increased over the same period (by about nine years); and that more and more people are living in de facto unions.  I do not think that these figures signal the death of marriage in NZ (divorce rates are down slightly on last year, as is the median age of marriage) but they again emphasis that New Zealand’s population is living in a very different social situation from only a generation ago. Interestingly, the amount of new civil unions registered last year is about 1% of the amount of new marriages, suggesting that while people may not be marrying at the same rate, they are not choosing to enter into civil unions as an alternative. Instead, people seem to be either putting marriage off or choosing to not formalise their relationships. I can imagine the cost of the wedding day itself may be a disincentive, especially in these economic times. 

Of course, is it really that surprising that marriage is not seen in the same light as 40 years ago? Our society has eroded any distinctive feature that marriage once had (at least legally) – there is now no fault divorce and marriages can be ended almost as easily as de facto relationships, while those in a de facto relationship have similar rights to property as those in a marriage.  If there are fewer and fewer special protections and privileges attached to the state of marriage, is it surprising that fewer and fewer people can be bothered entering into that state? Unless, of course, they think there is something more to it than that which the law bestows…

On another note, those of you interested in the United States’ demographic outlook (which we have covered recently in relation to its effect on economic outlook) there is a website that you must check out. Demographic Intelligence, a website founded by Dr Brad Wilcox, provides information on current and future fertility trends in the States.  In April, the Demographic Intelligence sponsored US Fertility ForecastTM projected that US births would fall to 4.015 million in 2010.  Last week, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention released its preliminary figures and it turns out that the actual number of births in the US last year was 4.007 million. Put another way, the US Fertility ForecastTM was 99.8% accurate.  This number was 7 per cent lower than the number of births in the US in 2007. However, according to the most recent edition of US Fertility ForecastTM, the number of births bottomed out in 2010 and will now rise for the next couple of years at least.  If the US Fertility ForecastTM keeps getting its predictions 99.8% accurate then maybe they should be doing some work on the UN projections. At least they can’t be much worse at it than Greenpeace is for the IPCC…

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