Marriages Up 4 Percent
Marriages registered in New Zealand in the year ended 31 December 2002 totalled 20,700, about 700 or 4 percent more than
in 2001 (20,000), according to Statistics New Zealand. Over the same period, the marriage rate (number of marriages per
1,000 not-married population aged 16 years and over) remained stable at 14.7 per 1,000. The latest rate is less than a
third of the peak level of 45.5 per 1,000 recorded in 1971. Factors that have contributed to the low marriage rate
include the growth of informal cohabitation (unmarried couples living together), the trend towards delayed marriage and
an increasing proportion of New Zealanders remaining single.
A growing proportion of marriages now involve the remarriage of one or both partners. In 2002, the number of marriages
in which one or both partners had previously been divorced or widowed was 7,500, or over one in three marriages (36
percent).
The trend toward later marriage is continuing. Legal marriages among teenagers have become less common. In 1971, 8,700
teenage girls married; three decades later, in 2002, the figure had dropped to just 600. Teenage girls made up 32
percent of all females who married in 1971, but just 3 percent in 2002. The median age at first marriage in 2002 was
29.4 years for men and 27.6 years for women. New Zealanders marrying for the first time in 2002 were, on average, about
six and a half years older than their counterparts in 1971, when early marriage was the norm. Women still tend to marry
men older than themselves; however, the gap between their median age at first marriage has narrowed, from three years in
the mid-1960s to under two years in 2002.
In the December 2002 year, 10,300 marriage dissolution orders were granted in family courts – about 600 or 6 percent
more than in 2001. The divorce rate (number of divorces per 1,000 estimated existing marriages) also increased, from
12.2 in 2001 to 12.9 in 2002.
The median age at divorce in 2002 was 42.4 years for men and 39.8 years for women. These people were, on average, three
years older than those who divorced a decade earlier. The rise partly reflects the steady rise in age at marriage during
the past two decades.
One-quarter of all divorces in 2002 were to couples who had been married 5 to 9 years. The median duration of marriages
ending in divorce in 2002 was 13 years compared with 12 years in 1992. Analysis of divorce statistics by year of
marriage shows that 30.3 percent of New Zealanders who had married in 1977 had divorced before their silver anniversary
(25 years). For those married in 1971 and 1967, the corresponding figures were 29.3 and 25.9 percent respectively.
Under half of all marriages that dissolved in 2002 involved children (under 18 years). The proportion of divorces
involving children fell from 46.8 percent in 2001 to 45.9 percent in 2002. Of those divorces involving children, there
was an average number of 1.9 children per divorce.
Brian Pink
Government Statistician