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One explanatory factor for the declining marriage rate
is that family formation has increasingly become connected to alternative
living arrangements, i.e. an increase in the share of cohabiting unions as an
alternative to a marriage-based family.
The other explanatory factor is postponement of marriage. It is a general
trend in the majority of European countries that the mean age of women at first
marriage is increasing. In Northern Europe it has increased by almost four
years during the past few decades. While in the EU15 the average age of women
at marriage is 27.5 years, in northern countries it is close to 30 years. In
Sweden a woman’s average age at marriage increase d from 24 years in
1960 to 30.2 years in 2000, in Denmark it increased from 22.8 to 29.5 years,
and in Finland it increased from 23.8 to 28 years (Population Statistics,
2006).
It was characteristic of the former socialist countries that women got
married on average two years earlier than women in western European countries.
Although in both groups of countries the mean age of women at first marriage
increased, by the turn of the century the differences between the EU15 and the
12 new member states remained about the same. Among new member states, the mean
age of women at first marriage is highest in Slovenia (26.7), Malta (26.7) and
Cyprus (26.4) – but they are all lagging behind the EU15 average. The
only “old” EU country where the average age of women at first
marriage is similar to the average of the new member states is Portugal (25.7);
among the countries of EU15, it is the lowest age of a woman at first marriage.