Marriage and Divorce Rates in Australia
On 27 November 2019, the Australian Bureau of Statistics issued a Media Release in relation to the most recent statistics available for marriage and divorce rates in Australia.
In the release the ABS said:
“There were 119,188 marriages in Australia in 2018, including 6,538 same-sex marriages.
2018 was the first full year in which same-sex couples could marry after changes to the Marriage Act in late 2017.
In 2018, same-sex marriages represented 5.5 per cent of the total number of marriages and inclusion of these marriages has influenced some key statistics.
The median age at marriage recorded the greatest increase in more than a decade. This was largely because the median age of same-sex couples was considerably higher than that of opposite-sex couples.
The data also showed that the most popular season to marry was spring (31.8 per cent of all marriages), and the most popular day to marry was Saturday 20 October, with 1,993 couples tying the knot.
The information also showed that there were 49,404 divorces in Australia in 2018. The crude divorce rate was 2.0 divorces per 1,000 people in 2018, compared to 2.7 in 1998.”
Please click here to read the full Media Release from the ABS.