The Office for National Statistics (ONS) recently released marriage statistics for 2021 and 2022.
Some key statistics from the ONS’s report were that there were 246,897 marriages in 2022. This is over twelve percent more than in 2019. Whilst this might reflect a trend towards more couples getting married it may also reflect marriages that were just delayed by the Covid epidemic.
There were more same-sex marriages in 2022 than ever before at more than three percent of all marriages. This was largely the result of an increase in the number of female same-sex marriages.
Most people who married, more than ninety percent, were living together before they married. This is the highest level since records began in 1994 when only sixty percent of couples cohabited prior to marriage.
People who did marry also tended to so later. The median age for opposite-sex marriages was nearly 33 years for men and 31 years for women. These are the highest median ages on record. The median age marriage in same-sex marriages were even higher. For men this 36 and for women it was 32.
In the thirty years to 2022 the number of marriages taking place had decreased by more than twenty percent. However, this still means that each year more than six hundred thousand people were marrying one another.
Most marriages in 2022 were civil ceremonies. Only seventeen percent of marriages were religious ceremonies. This means that eighty seven percent of marriages were civil ceremonies. In 1992 only fifty percent of marriages were civil ceremonies so over the last thirty years the this has increased significantly. This perhaps wider societal trends of declining religiosity.
Marriage rates were also higher than divorce rates in 2022 meaning that more people were married than were divorced.
Original reporting by Family Law Week