Divorce down, marriage up

By Samuel Cardwell

August 29, 2008 06:30pm
Article from: AAP

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AUSTRALIA is experiencing something of a marriage renaissance, with divorce rates dropping and marriage rates starting to rise.

Figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed there were 47,963 divorces last year, a drop of 6 per cent on the 2006 figure of 51,375.

The crude divorce rate (divorces per thousand people) also fell from 2.5 to 2.3 per cent over the same period.

The number of divorces granted in Australia has been steadily dropping since 2001 when the number of divorces peaked at 55,330 and the crude divorce rate was 2.9 per cent.

Joint divorce applications have been steadily rising over the past 20 years and were up 3.4 per cent in 2007 while applications filed by the husband or the wife were down 2.0 and 1.3 per cent respectively.

Despite the drop, it seems wives are still more likely to end a marriage, with 38 per cent of divorces filed by women, 33 per cent filed jointly and 27 per cent filed by men.

Australia's marriage rate has been in steady decline for the past 20 years.

But the drop in the divorce rate since 2001 has been accompanied by a small increase in the number of marriages in the same period.

ABS figures from 2006 showed a 0.2 per cent increase in the crude marriage rate since 2001 when the rate bottomed out at 2.3 per cent.

The number of registered marriages in 2001 was 103,130. By 2006 this figure was up 11,092 to 114,222.

Despite this, the marriage rate was still 23.6 per cent lower in 2006 than it was in 1986.

bliss wrote on Aug 29^th, 2008 at 8:17pm:


Why not tie the knot. Can't be happy all your life I suppose.

A 12 month engagement wouldn't make any difference - but those figures on divorce are pretty black and white.  There are so many people who are separated, but either couldn't be bothered divorcing, can't afford to or hope that eventually they might reconcile for the sake of the children.

Plenty of these separated people have no desire to remarry - so find it easier to just drift along using the fact that they're still married as a good excuse not to let it happen again.

The ones who usually opt for divorce are those who have found someone else to make the same mistake again with.