| dc.description.abstract | As disaffection with marriage persists, so the tide of divorce continues to rise: in most countries of the European Union, crude divorce rates reached unprecedented levels in 1995. In order to gain a clear understanding of this phenomenon, we need to look beyond the crude rates and place the divorce figures in the context of the marriages which give rise to them. This issue of Statistics in focus looks at the proportion of marriages dissolved by divorce per calendar year, i. e. the total divorce rate, and per year/marriage cohort. In 1995, the total divorce rate in EUR 15 was 0.3 divorce per marriage: the most recent observations suggest that nearly one third of all marriages would end in divorce. In the Scandinavian countries and the United Kingdom, the figure is 0,40-0,50. Looking at the marriage cohorts, the proportion of divorces is estimatedat 14% for marriages entered into in the EU in 1960 and about 25% for more recently married couples, less than half the level in the United States. Married couples in the EU are getting divorced sooner: the mean duration of marriages dissolved by divorce has declined from 14 years for the 1970 cohort to 12 years for the 1980 cohort. |
