placestats

Free and fair elections vs. Marriage rate

Fades after adjusting for income

Across 46 countries, Free and fair elections and Marriage rate rise and fall together at r = -0.58 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) leaves r = -0.63, which could easily be chance (q = 0.11, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). Caution: leave-one-out range spans 0.19 in r.

Comparing countries across the middle half of marriage rate, 3.7 to 5.33 marriages per 1,000 people, free and fair elections is worse by 0.119 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.113 points.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.583p = 2.2e-5 · 46 countries
After adjusting for national income-0.628p = 3.8e-6 · likely range [-0.78, -0.41]
p, allowing for regions0.005standard error 0.113 · 5 regions
Check for luck (q)0.112across 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.

Free and fair elections · index (0-1)link with income +0.61 · high
Marriage rate · marriages per 1,000 peoplelink with income -0.06 · independent

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

Every country as a dot

Free and fair elections · index (0-1) →Marriage rate · marriages per 1,000 people →00.9681.399.6Argentina: 0.878 index (0-1), 2.79 marriages per 1,000 peopleAustralia: 0.962 index (0-1), 4.89 marriages per 1,000 peopleAustria: 0.938 index (0-1), 5.24 marriages per 1,000 peopleBelgium: 0.968 index (0-1), 4.2 marriages per 1,000 peopleBulgaria: 0.64 index (0-1), 3.9 marriages per 1,000 peopleCanada: 0.944 index (0-1), 2.6 marriages per 1,000 peopleSwitzerland: 0.942 index (0-1), 4.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleChile: 0.956 index (0-1), 2.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleChina: 0 index (0-1), 9.6 marriages per 1,000 peopleColombia: 0.756 index (0-1), 1.39 marriages per 1,000 peopleCosta Rica: 0.944 index (0-1), 4.39 marriages per 1,000 peopleCyprus: 0.909 index (0-1), 8.9 marriages per 1,000 peopleCzechia: 0.94 index (0-1), 5.1 marriages per 1,000 peopleGermany: 0.957 index (0-1), 4.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleDenmark: 0.961 index (0-1), 5.34 marriages per 1,000 peopleSpain: 0.956 index (0-1), 3.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleEstonia: 0.952 index (0-1), 5.3 marriages per 1,000 peopleFinland: 0.961 index (0-1), 3.9 marriages per 1,000 peopleFrance: 0.941 index (0-1), 3.6 marriages per 1,000 peopleUnited Kingdom: 0.924 index (0-1), 1.4 marriages per 1,000 peopleGreece: 0.944 index (0-1), 4.2 marriages per 1,000 peopleCroatia: 0.875 index (0-1), 4.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleHungary: 0.597 index (0-1), 6.6 marriages per 1,000 peopleIreland: 0.945 index (0-1), 3.3 marriages per 1,000 peopleIceland: 0.929 index (0-1), 5 marriages per 1,000 peopleIsrael: 0.873 index (0-1), 5.46 marriages per 1,000 peopleItaly: 0.945 index (0-1), 3.2 marriages per 1,000 peopleJapan: 0.937 index (0-1), 4.1 marriages per 1,000 peopleKorea, Rep.: 0.935 index (0-1), 3.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleLithuania: 0.882 index (0-1), 5.7 marriages per 1,000 peopleLuxembourg: 0.944 index (0-1), 3.8 marriages per 1,000 peopleLatvia: 0.92 index (0-1), 6.3 marriages per 1,000 peopleMexico: 0.545 index (0-1), 3.9 marriages per 1,000 peopleMalta: 0.903 index (0-1), 4.8 marriages per 1,000 peopleNetherlands: 0.954 index (0-1), 4 marriages per 1,000 peopleNorway: 0.966 index (0-1), 3.8 marriages per 1,000 peopleNew Zealand: 0.954 index (0-1), 3.68 marriages per 1,000 peoplePoland: 0.825 index (0-1), 4.2 marriages per 1,000 peoplePortugal: 0.94 index (0-1), 3.5 marriages per 1,000 peopleRomania: 0.658 index (0-1), 6.2 marriages per 1,000 peopleRussian Federation: 0.135 index (0-1), 8.5 marriages per 1,000 peopleSlovak Republic: 0.938 index (0-1), 5.4 marriages per 1,000 peopleSlovenia: 0.916 index (0-1), 3.2 marriages per 1,000 peopleSweden: 0.945 index (0-1), 4.6 marriages per 1,000 peopleTurkiye: 0.417 index (0-1), 6.8 marriages per 1,000 peopleUnited States: 0.902 index (0-1), 6.2 marriages per 1,000 peopleCANCHLCHNCOLCYPGBRLVAMEXRUSTURUSA

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted-0.5832.2e-546
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted-0.3540.01646
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income-0.6283.8e-646
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income-0.3830.00946

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 46 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: -0.046 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.695 (without CYP) to -0.506 (without CHN). 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: CHN (+0.122).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.
  • leave-one-out range spans 0.19 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 Asia32-0.50

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 third16-0.85
Middle third15-0.29
Richest third15-0.41

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
Christians38-0.46

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 = -0.182 after dropping 9 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 33years. 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 = -0.080, 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 free and fair elections moved did not tend to see their marriage rate move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)-0.628for comparison
Within countries-0.238each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.080q = 0.607 · 44 countries
Year-on-year changes-0.047q = 0.322

1,366 country-years (one country in one year), 44 countries, 1990–2022, about 31 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 41% for Free and fair elections, 42% 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

0.10−0.1-100+10years Marriage rate trails Free and fair elections →lag -10: r = 0.061 (n = 1,077)lag -9: r = 0.063 (n = 1,121)lag -8: r = 0.076 (n = 1,165)lag -7: r = 0.076 (n = 1,209)lag -6: r = 0.058 (n = 1,252)lag -5: r = 0.025 (n = 1,294)lag -4: r = -0.016 (n = 1,331)lag -3: r = -0.040 (n = 1,367)lag -2: r = -0.063 (n = 1,367)lag -1: r = -0.071 (n = 1,367)lag +0: r = -0.080 (n = 1,366)lag +1: r = -0.059 (n = 1,328)lag +2: r = -0.058 (n = 1,289)lag +3: r = -0.044 (n = 1,249)lag +4: r = -0.019 (n = 1,209)lag +5: r = -0.005 (n = 1,168)lag +6: r = 0.011 (n = 1,128)lag +7: r = 0.028 (n = 1,088)lag +8: r = 0.048 (n = 1,047)lag +9: r = 0.051 (n = 1,006)lag +10: r = 0.044 (n = 965)

Same year (lag 0): -0.080. 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 data


index (0-1)
marriages per 1,000 people		Years
Belgium BEL0.9684.22025, 2022
Norway NOR0.9663.82025, 2022
Australia AUS0.9624.892025, 2022
Finland FIN0.9613.92025, 2022
Denmark DNK0.9615.342025, 2022
Germany DEU0.9574.72025, 2022
Spain ESP0.9563.72025, 2022
Chile CHL0.9562.72025, 2021
New Zealand NZL0.9543.682025, 2022
Netherlands NLD0.95442025, 2022
Estonia EST0.9525.32025, 2022
Sweden SWE0.9454.62025, 2022
Italy ITA0.9453.22025, 2022
Ireland IRL0.9453.32025, 2021
Luxembourg LUX0.9443.82025, 2022

Coppedge, M. et al., V-Dem Dataset, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project
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

Free and fair elections

Free and fair elections index

V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

Whether elections are run without voter-registration fraud, widespread irregularities, government threats against the opposition, vote buying or election violence. This asks a narrower question than whether a country is a democracy, and one that is easier to answer. A state can run clean elections while barring the opposition from standing. It can also run dirty elections and still change government. It is the clean-elections part of the electoral democracy index. So its pair with that index, and with liberal and participatory democracy, is built from the same numbers and flagged as such.

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 2012–2025. 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 Free and fair elections and Marriage rate

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Free and fair elections changes Marriage rate, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Free and fair elections or Marriage rate