Archive:Marriages and births in the Netherlands

Why marry? Marital status and childbirth in the Netherlands

Author: Lydia Geijtenbeek - Statistics Netherlands.

Data extracted in June 2015.

This article on marriages and births is part of a pilot project implemented by Eurostat together with eight Member States (Estonia, Spain, Latvia, Croatia, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia and Sweden). The aim of the pilot project is to better reply to user's needs by complementing the Eurostat article presenting data on an EU level with more detailed information on the same topic, but at national level. Articles from the eight Member States are available in the corresponding national languages as well as in English and they form, together with the Eurostat article, an online publication.

Despite the introduction of same-sex marriage in 2001, the marriage rate in the Netherlands has been declining since 2000, while the age at first marriage rose. Nevertheless, more than half of Dutch adults are married, while two-thirds are in some form of partnership. Marriage does not appear to affect the fertility rate though: while women increasingly give birth outside marriage, fertility remains relatively high at around 1.7 children per woman.

File:Marriages and crude marriage rate new.png

Figure 1: Marriages and crude marriage rate
Source: Statistics Netherlands

File:Age at first marriage.png

Figure 2: Age at first marriage
Source: Statistics Netherlands

Figure 3: Divorces and crude divorce rate
Source: Statistics Netherlands

File:Marital status for population aged 20 and over, 2011.png

Figure 4: Marital status for population aged 20 and over, 2011
Source:Statistics Netherlands

File:Percentage of births outside marriage.png

Figure 5: Percentage of births outside marriage
Source: Statistics Netherlands

File:Same-sex marriages .png

Figure 6: Same-sex marriages
Source: Statistics Netherlands

Main statistical findings

Fewer marriages

In 1970, no fewer than 123 521 marriages were concluded in the Netherlands. This was an all-time high. Since then, the number of marriages has steadily declined, to 64 549 in 2013. The Dutch population, on the other hand, rose from approximately 13 million in 1970 to almost 17 million people in 2013, so that the crude marriage rate dropped even more sharply, from 9.5 marriages per 1 000 inhabitants in 1970 to only 3.8 per 1 000 in 2013. Figure 1 shows how the marriage rate and number of marriages continued to decline between 2000 and 2013.

Later marriage

Apart from a decrease in the number of marriages, there is another clear trend: people marry at increasingly later ages. While the average bride and groom were 28.0 and 30.7 years old in 2000, average marital age had increased to 30.3 and 32.9 years by 2013. Thus people now marry about two years later on average. And although differences between men and women in labour force participation and earnings have decreased, the age difference between brides and grooms remains stable, with grooms being about 2.6 years older on average. Figure 2 shows how the increase in marital age is an on-going trend, increasing by about one year of age in every five years.

Timing of marriage and marriage rates correlate very specifically: when marriage age increases, this automatically leads to fewer marriages per year. You can compare this with traffic flows: fewer people (or cars, or bicycles) will overtake you if you are moving in the same direction than if you are standing still. Conversely, if marital age decreases, there will be a peak in the number of marriages. Figure 1 shows such a peak for 2010: in this year the average marital age in the Netherlands decreased by 0.1 of a year, while the number of marriages increased by 3 280.

The marriage boom in 1970 can partly be explained by a related demographic: this was the year when the “baby boom” generation reached marrying age. This generation comprises people born just after World War II, when there was a clear spike in birth rate. In the 1970s people married in their mid-twenties on average.

Divorces stable

While the marriage rate mostly decreased in the Netherlands, the crude divorce rate increased until the early 1980s. It subsequently more or less stabilised, peaked slightly in 2001, and has become more stable again since then. As a result, the number of divorces in 2013 was 33 636, which means that there were nearly twice as many marriages as divorces in that year. The crude divorce rate, or number of divorces per 1,000 married people, was 2.0 in 2013.

Still mostly married

Even though the number of marriages has decreased since 1970, the percentage of the population who are married has remained more or less stable. This is not surprising, considering that most of the baby boom generation who married around that time are still alive, and most of them are still married. The proportion of divorcees on the other hand, has been increasing ever since the 1980s, while the proportion of widows and widowers has hardly changed.

What does this mean for the marital status of the Dutch in 2011? Among people aged over 20, a majority of 53 % are married, while only 9 % are divorced and 7 % widowed. Only 1 % were officially registered as partners, an option that was introduced in the Netherlands in 1998. The remaining 30 % have marital status “single”, although these include people who have a partner but are not officially registered as such. People who belong to the same household and have a marriage-like relationship, but are not married or in a registered partnership, are said to be living in a “consensual union”. This was the case for almost one in seven (14 %) Dutch persons in 2011. The remaining third of the Dutch population are divorced, widowed or single people who do not live with a partner.

First children, then marriage

In the previous century, most couples got married first and then had children. This is still reflected in the mean ages at which women became a spouse or parent in 2000: the average first-time bride was 28.0 years, while first-time mothers were on average 28.6. By 2013 this pattern had reversed: women marry for the first time when they are 30.3 on average, but have their first baby at the age of 29.4 years.

One consequence of both this reversal in timing and the lower marriage rate is that many more children are born out-of-wedlock. In 2000 only a quarter of births in the Netherlands were outside marriage, which was below the EU average of 27.3 %. This has changed rapidly since then, with the proportion of non-marital births out-of-wedlock having nearly doubled to 47.4 % in 2013, while the average of the EU-28 countries did not pass 40 % in 2012.

The lower marriage rate and later child-bearing age did not impact the fertility rate of Dutch women, however. On the contrary: since the early 1980s the fertility rate has been rising: to 1.72 children per woman in 2000 – via a modest peak of 1.79 in 2010 – to a slightly lower 1.68 in 2013. The fertility rate estimates the total number of children per woman, presuming that age-specific the birth rates remain stable. The downward trend in fertility rate after 2010 was observed in both the Netherlands and the EU-28 average, and is the possible effect of postponing family formation because of the financial crisis. Notwithstanding the descendent trend, 171 341 babies were born in the Netherlands in 2013.

Marriages between same-sex couples

On 1 April 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to open up marriage for same-sex couples. In that year 1 339 marriages were concluded between two men and 1 075 marriages between two women. After this year the number of same-sex marriages decreased somewhat. In the last decade the yearly number of same-sex marriages appears to follow roughly the fluctuations in the number of heterosexual marriages. In 2013 there were 522 marriages between two men and 700 marriages between two women, which combined amounts to almost 2 % of all marriages in that year.