Marriage and Divorce Statistics
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Here are some interesting figures especially when you look at what they mean for solo parents in their 40's. If nothing else there are some interesting themes to get those Christmas dinners sparking!
There were 21,006 marriages in 2004 (It has been steady over last decade with the average at around 20,600.). According to the Statistics Department NZ marriages still remain around a third of those during the post-war levels. The numbers in defacto relationships or remaining single are increasing and account for this low marriage level.
There were 10,609 divorces in 2004 and from these divorces there were 9185 children under 18 years of age affected.
What are the chances of a successful marriage? Well that depends on whether we see marriage as ‘for life’. Generally it would seem at least a third of marriages fail. For example of those who married in 1973 1 in every 3 were divorced before their 25th year.
Re-marriage and de-facto relationships
One third of all marriages today are remarriages of at least one previously divorced person.
Only 16% however, involve re-marriage of both partners. This increase is due to the increasing pool of divorcees in our community. For instance in 1996 one in four lived together but were not legally married.
Where have all the men gone?
In the 2001 Census we see that there are non-partnered divorced women vastly outnumber partnered divorced men with 46,000 males and 72,000 females respectively. We could perhaps infer from this that divorced men marry again more frequently and are perhaps marrying younger previously unmarried women, leaving out older divorced women.
On the down side we see that women are still carrying the burden of care for children. It is still clearly men who are more able to enter new relationships since around 33,366 men claimed in the last Census to be a single parent family with at least one dependent child, whilst there were 149,556 women in this position in 2001.
The good news is more women are marrying younger men and this is a growing trend! Simply put there are not enough older men to go around, so why not consider a younger man, despite the obvious immediate benefits of youth, he will keep you company in your older years too!
On the Subject of One-parent families
There appears to be a decrease of solo mothers living alone and a corresponding increase in solo mothers living in a multi family situation. There does not appear to be any increasing economic independence on the part of female parents but more a need to combine economic units.
This is not surprising when we look at the income levels of Single Parent Families living in private dwellings; where 48.59 % earn $25,000 or less (2001 Census).
The number of one-parent families with at least one dependent child is projected to increase by at least 28% from 153,000 in 2001 to 196,000 in 2021, although this could be as high as 215,000.
Single parent households will equate to over one third of households with children. So yes if your reading this and your a solo parent you can see you are certainly not part of a small minority. In fact, single parent households are projected to account for 36% of New Zealand households with dependent children by 2021. The actual number of one-parent families is projected to increase to 251,000 in 2021.
These statistics have been obtained from the NZ Statistics Department and it is advised that anyone wishing to reprint or reconstitute these visit their website for direct statistical tables.
http://www.stats.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/FC1BDDF4-F40F-4B05-B00C-104AC9D38D78/0/FocusingOnWomen2005.pdf
http://www.stats.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/17EDC29C-CCFC-44BB-9698-4781902D0DD4/0/NZFamilyAndHHProj2004.pdf
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