Marriage

While some indicators are volatile and jump around from year to year, many demographic and social variables tend to be stable, with the pace of change seemingly glacial. Nevertheless, over a period of decades or a generation, changes can be substantial, even revolutionary. It is not an exaggeration to say that family life in the selected countries has been undergoing revolutionary changes in practices, attitudes and expectations, and to some extent these changes are captured in the data in these and the following tables.

Table 14.1 shows that young people are increasingly delaying marriage. In the almost quarter-century between 1980 and 2004, the mean age at first marriage rose by around four years. In every single country, and among both sexes, the mean age at the time of first marriage rose. The Nordic countries and the Netherlands are marrying the latest among the selected countries, while the English-speaking countries show considerable diversity. While marrying relatively younger is still the norm in the United States, and somewhat less so in Canada and the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand have moved more towards later marriage.

In Australia, the age at first marriage edged steadily downward over the decades until reaching its youngest point in 1971 (23.8 years for men and 21.4 years for women), but has been climbing since then. Moreover, compared with the previous generations' gradual movement towards ever-younger marriage, the trend towards older marriage has been very rapid.