placestats

Divorce rate (UN) vs. Marriage rate

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 41 countries, Divorce rate (UN) and Marriage rate rise and fall together at r = +0.57 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = +0.55, q = 0.0018, allowing for the many pairs tested). Caution: leave-one-out range spans 0.25 in r.

Comparing countries across the middle half of marriage rate, 3.8 to 5.3 marriages per 1,000 people, divorce rate (un) is 0.388 divorces per 1,000 people higher at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.376 divorces per 1,000 people.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.574p = 8.6e-5 · 41 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.555p = 0.000 · likely range [+0.29, +0.74]
p, allowing for regions0.000standard error 0.043 · 5 regions
Check for luck (q)0.002across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Divorce rate (UN) · divorces per 1,000 peoplelink with income +0.07 · independent
Marriage rate · marriages per 1,000 peoplelink with income -0.06 · independent

Neither of these is closely tied to national income, so adjusting for income is a real test here, not a formality.

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Divorce rate (UN) · divorces per 1,000 people →Marriage rate · marriages per 1,000 people →0.6374.651.48.9Australia: 1.83 divorces per 1,000 people, 4.89 marriages per 1,000 peopleAustria: 1.63 divorces per 1,000 people, 5.24 marriages per 1,000 peopleBelgium: 1.7 divorces per 1,000 people, 4.2 marriages per 1,000 peopleBulgaria: 1.34 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.9 marriages per 1,000 peopleCanada: 1.13 divorces per 1,000 people, 2.6 marriages per 1,000 peopleSwitzerland: 1.74 divorces per 1,000 people, 4.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleCosta Rica: 2.48 divorces per 1,000 people, 4.39 marriages per 1,000 peopleCyprus: 1.66 divorces per 1,000 people, 8.9 marriages per 1,000 peopleCzechia: 1.91 divorces per 1,000 people, 5.1 marriages per 1,000 peopleGermany: 1.55 divorces per 1,000 people, 4.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleDenmark: 2.16 divorces per 1,000 people, 5.34 marriages per 1,000 peopleSpain: 1.59 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleEstonia: 2.1 divorces per 1,000 people, 5.3 marriages per 1,000 peopleFinland: 2.11 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.9 marriages per 1,000 peopleFrance: 1.93 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.6 marriages per 1,000 peopleUnited Kingdom: 1.33 divorces per 1,000 people, 1.4 marriages per 1,000 peopleGreece: 1.45 divorces per 1,000 people, 4.2 marriages per 1,000 peopleCroatia: 1.28 divorces per 1,000 people, 4.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleHungary: 1.85 divorces per 1,000 people, 6.6 marriages per 1,000 peopleIreland: 0.637 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.3 marriages per 1,000 peopleIceland: 1.88 divorces per 1,000 people, 5 marriages per 1,000 peopleIsrael: 1.58 divorces per 1,000 people, 5.46 marriages per 1,000 peopleItaly: 1.35 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.2 marriages per 1,000 peopleJapan: 1.48 divorces per 1,000 people, 4.1 marriages per 1,000 peopleKorea, Rep.: 1.79 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleLithuania: 2.47 divorces per 1,000 people, 5.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleLuxembourg: 1.78 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.8 marriages per 1,000 peopleLatvia: 2.85 divorces per 1,000 people, 6.3 marriages per 1,000 peopleMexico: 1.25 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.9 marriages per 1,000 peopleMalta: 0.964 divorces per 1,000 people, 4.8 marriages per 1,000 peopleNetherlands: 1.41 divorces per 1,000 people, 4 marriages per 1,000 peopleNorway: 1.53 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.8 marriages per 1,000 peopleNew Zealand: 1.42 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.68 marriages per 1,000 peoplePoland: 1.57 divorces per 1,000 people, 4.2 marriages per 1,000 peoplePortugal: 1.48 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.5 marriages per 1,000 peopleRomania: 1.09 divorces per 1,000 people, 6.2 marriages per 1,000 peopleRussian Federation: 4.65 divorces per 1,000 people, 8.5 marriages per 1,000 peopleSlovak Republic: 1.51 divorces per 1,000 people, 5.4 marriages per 1,000 peopleSlovenia: 0.972 divorces per 1,000 people, 3.2 marriages per 1,000 peopleSweden: 2.05 divorces per 1,000 people, 4.6 marriages per 1,000 peopleTurkiye: 2.19 divorces per 1,000 people, 6.8 marriages per 1,000 peopleCANCRICYPGBRIRLLVAMLTROURUS

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted+0.5748.6e-541
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.5180.00141
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.5550.00041
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income+0.5240.00141

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 41 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.019 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.397 (without RUS) to +0.646 (without CYP). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: RUS (-0.158).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.
  • leave-one-out range spans 0.25 in r
  • correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

nr
Europe & Central Asia32+0.56

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

nr
Poorest third14+0.72
Middle third13+0.40
Richest third14+0.56

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Christians34+0.56

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.401 after dropping 5 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 10years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = -0.023, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose divorce rate (un) moved did not tend to see their marriage rate move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.555for comparison
Within countries+0.223each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.023q = 0.859 · 37 countries
Year-on-year changes+0.171q = 0.155
Read with care.
  • Much of the within-country association disappears once shared global year effects are removed, which points to a common worldwide trend rather than a country-level relationship.

353 country-years (one country in one year), 37 countries, 2013–2022, about 10 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 24% for Divorce rate (UN), 12% for Marriage rate. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

0.20−0.2-100+4years Marriage rate trails Divorce rate (UN) →lag -10: r = 0.046 (n = 413)lag -9: r = -0.034 (n = 413)lag -8: r = -0.008 (n = 414)lag -7: r = -0.058 (n = 415)lag -6: r = -0.078 (n = 416)lag -5: r = -0.127 (n = 417)lag -4: r = -0.148 (n = 417)lag -3: r = -0.160 (n = 415)lag -2: r = -0.144 (n = 414)lag -1: r = -0.141 (n = 388)lag +0: r = -0.023 (n = 353)lag +1: r = -0.086 (n = 318)lag +2: r = -0.039 (n = 282)lag +3: r = -0.067 (n = 242)lag +4: r = 0.012 (n = 204)

Same year (lag 0): -0.023. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The largest value on this curve (-0.16 at lag -3) is higher than the same-year one by 0.14. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 15 closely related estimates, and picking the biggest of many tests always makes it look bigger. That is exactly why nothing on this site is ranked or chosen by lag.

The data


divorces per 1,000 people
marriages per 1,000 people		Years
Russian Federation RUS4.658.52013
Latvia LVA2.856.32024, 2022
Costa Rica CRI2.484.392024, 2022
Lithuania LTU2.475.72024, 2022
Turkiye TUR2.196.82024, 2022
Denmark DNK2.165.342024, 2022
Finland FIN2.113.92024, 2022
Estonia EST2.15.32024, 2022
Sweden SWE2.054.62024, 2022
France FRA1.933.62016, 2022
Czechia CZE1.915.12024, 2022
Iceland ISL1.8852020
Hungary HUN1.856.62024, 2022
Australia AUS1.834.892023, 2022
Korea, Rep. KOR1.793.72024, 2022

United Nations Statistics Division, Demographic Yearbook, 2017 to 2024 editions: tables of marriages and crude marriage rates, and of divorces and crude divorce rates, by urban/rural residence.
OECD Family Database, indicators SF3.1 (marriage and divorce rates) and SF1.2 (children in families); US series before 1990 from the US Census Bureau and CDC/NCHS

Sources

Divorce rate (UN)

Crude divorce rate, countries with complete registration

United Nations Statistics Division · UNdata terms of use · updated annual (each edition covers the latest five years)

Divorces granted in the year per 1,000 people, from the same UN Demographic Yearbook collection and with the same rule: only countries whose register the UN rates as at least 90% complete. It is a crude rate, counted against everyone, not just married people. So a country where few people marry can have few divorces without its marriages lasting any longer. Countries where divorce is rare by law or custom and countries where it is simply not recorded can look alike. The United States is left out: its divorce counts miss six states, but the rate is worked out over the whole population. No "better" direction is set.

Marriage rate

Crude marriage rate

OECD · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 (OECD terms and conditions) · updated annual

Registered marriages in the year per 1,000 people (counted at mid-year), from official records. Couples living together and registered partnerships are left out. So the rate shows how often people marry, and nothing about how many live as couples. New Zealand counts civil unions. Same-sex marriages count in each country's figure from the year it made them legal. This is the only ready-made series that compares countries. It covers only OECD members, about forty countries, nearly all of them rich. So its links with other measures are worked out over only a third of the countries on the site, and adjusting for GDP has less to remove. The low points in 2020 are the pandemic, not a break in the series. But the British and Canadian series stop at 2020, so their latest value is that low point: 1.4 and 2.6, against 3.7 and 3.9 the year before. The links with the governance measures stay the same using pre-pandemic values, or with both countries removed. No "better" direction is set: it describes how people live, not how well a country is doing.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2013–2024. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 5 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Divorce rate (UN) and Marriage rate

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Divorce rate (UN) changes Marriage rate, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Divorce rate (UN) or Marriage rate