placestats

Marriage rate (UN) vs. Unintended pregnancies ending in abortion

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 72 countries, Marriage rate (UN) and Unintended pregnancies ending in abortion rise and fall together at r = +0.52 (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 = +0.49, q = 0.028, allowing for the many pairs tested).

Comparing countries across the middle half of unintended pregnancies ending in abortion, 35.3% to 59.6% of unintended pregnancies, marriage rate (un) is 1.08 marriages per 1,000 people higher at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 1.11 marriages per 1,000 people.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.518p = 3.2e-6 · 72 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.491p = 1.4e-5 · likely range [+0.29, +0.65]
p, allowing for regions0.001standard error 0.074 · 6 regions
Check for luck (q)0.028across 14,952 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.

Marriage rate (UN) · marriages per 1,000 peoplelink with income -0.21 · independent
Unintended pregnancies ending in abortion · % of unintended pregnancieslink with income +0.12 · 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

Marriage rate (UN) · marriages per 1,000 people →Unintended pregnancies ending in abortion · % of unintended pregnancies →1.098.819.7%86.1%Albania: 6.74 marriages per 1,000 people, 59.2% of unintended pregnanciesArgentina: 2.84 marriages per 1,000 people, 48.4% of unintended pregnanciesArmenia: 5.12 marriages per 1,000 people, 81.8% of unintended pregnanciesAustralia: 4.44 marriages per 1,000 people, 43.1% of unintended pregnanciesAzerbaijan: 4.86 marriages per 1,000 people, 77.6% of unintended pregnanciesBelgium: 3.96 marriages per 1,000 people, 37.1% of unintended pregnanciesBulgaria: 3.2 marriages per 1,000 people, 35.7% of unintended pregnanciesBosnia and Herzegovina: 5.43 marriages per 1,000 people, 57.3% of unintended pregnanciesBelarus: 5.05 marriages per 1,000 people, 56% of unintended pregnanciesBarbados: 6.42 marriages per 1,000 people, 58% of unintended pregnanciesCanada: 2.59 marriages per 1,000 people, 36.8% of unintended pregnanciesSwitzerland: 4.21 marriages per 1,000 people, 25.5% of unintended pregnanciesChile: 3.04 marriages per 1,000 people, 52.5% of unintended pregnanciesCabo Verde: 4.78 marriages per 1,000 people, 48.6% of unintended pregnanciesCosta Rica: 4.17 marriages per 1,000 people, 41% of unintended pregnanciesCzechia: 4.09 marriages per 1,000 people, 19.7% of unintended pregnanciesGermany: 4.18 marriages per 1,000 people, 27.1% of unintended pregnanciesDenmark: 5.51 marriages per 1,000 people, 38.9% of unintended pregnanciesDominican Republic: 4.11 marriages per 1,000 people, 44% of unintended pregnanciesSpain: 3.57 marriages per 1,000 people, 43.1% of unintended pregnanciesEstonia: 4.63 marriages per 1,000 people, 41.7% of unintended pregnanciesFinland: 3.81 marriages per 1,000 people, 24.8% of unintended pregnanciesFrance: 3.64 marriages per 1,000 people, 49.5% of unintended pregnanciesUnited Kingdom: 1.29 marriages per 1,000 people, 36.2% of unintended pregnanciesGeorgia: 5.86 marriages per 1,000 people, 86.1% of unintended pregnanciesGreece: 3.52 marriages per 1,000 people, 45.8% of unintended pregnanciesGuatemala: 4.21 marriages per 1,000 people, 30.1% of unintended pregnanciesGuyana: 5.38 marriages per 1,000 people, 47.5% of unintended pregnanciesHong Kong SAR, China: 6.33 marriages per 1,000 people, 46.1% of unintended pregnanciesCroatia: 4.46 marriages per 1,000 people, 49.9% of unintended pregnanciesHungary: 4.86 marriages per 1,000 people, 49.4% of unintended pregnanciesIceland: 5.05 marriages per 1,000 people, 39.1% of unintended pregnanciesItaly: 3.12 marriages per 1,000 people, 67.1% of unintended pregnanciesJamaica: 6.13 marriages per 1,000 people, 43.9% of unintended pregnanciesJapan: 3.81 marriages per 1,000 people, 30.1% of unintended pregnanciesKazakhstan: 6.13 marriages per 1,000 people, 82.1% of unintended pregnanciesKyrgyz Republic: 6.24 marriages per 1,000 people, 79.2% of unintended pregnanciesKorea, Rep.: 4.36 marriages per 1,000 people, 61.9% of unintended pregnanciesSt. Lucia: 3.58 marriages per 1,000 people, 54.6% of unintended pregnanciesSri Lanka: 6.87 marriages per 1,000 people, 72.3% of unintended pregnanciesLithuania: 4.47 marriages per 1,000 people, 27.7% of unintended pregnanciesLatvia: 5.45 marriages per 1,000 people, 30.2% of unintended pregnanciesMoldova: 6.1 marriages per 1,000 people, 70.6% of unintended pregnanciesMexico: 3.81 marriages per 1,000 people, 50.9% of unintended pregnanciesNorth Macedonia: 6.03 marriages per 1,000 people, 63.4% of unintended pregnanciesMontenegro: 4.57 marriages per 1,000 people, 54.2% of unintended pregnanciesMongolia: 4.04 marriages per 1,000 people, 65.7% of unintended pregnanciesNicaragua: 4.33 marriages per 1,000 people, 27.5% of unintended pregnanciesNetherlands: 3.83 marriages per 1,000 people, 40.8% of unintended pregnanciesNorway: 3.81 marriages per 1,000 people, 31.7% of unintended pregnanciesNew Zealand: 3.41 marriages per 1,000 people, 29.3% of unintended pregnanciesPanama: 1.74 marriages per 1,000 people, 41.3% of unintended pregnanciesPeru: 1.97 marriages per 1,000 people, 47.5% of unintended pregnanciesPoland: 3.7 marriages per 1,000 people, 36.6% of unintended pregnanciesPuerto Rico (US): 3.7 marriages per 1,000 people, 58.3% of unintended pregnanciesPortugal: 3.53 marriages per 1,000 people, 32.4% of unintended pregnanciesRomania: 5.32 marriages per 1,000 people, 71.2% of unintended pregnanciesRussian Federation: 8.54 marriages per 1,000 people, 71.8% of unintended pregnanciesSingapore: 6.3 marriages per 1,000 people, 27.5% of unintended pregnanciesSerbia: 4.6 marriages per 1,000 people, 60.8% of unintended pregnanciesSao Tome and Principe: 1.09 marriages per 1,000 people, 29.6% of unintended pregnanciesSuriname: 3.38 marriages per 1,000 people, 46.5% of unintended pregnanciesSlovak Republic: 4.88 marriages per 1,000 people, 26.2% of unintended pregnanciesSlovenia: 2.99 marriages per 1,000 people, 24.4% of unintended pregnanciesSweden: 4.25 marriages per 1,000 people, 48.3% of unintended pregnanciesTajikistan: 8.8 marriages per 1,000 people, 71% of unintended pregnanciesTrinidad and Tobago: 5.3 marriages per 1,000 people, 58% of unintended pregnanciesUkraine: 5.17 marriages per 1,000 people, 75.9% of unintended pregnanciesUruguay: 2.78 marriages per 1,000 people, 27.6% of unintended pregnanciesUnited States: 6.1 marriages per 1,000 people, 34.2% of unintended pregnanciesUzbekistan: 7.31 marriages per 1,000 people, 80.2% of unintended pregnanciesViet Nam: 6.17 marriages per 1,000 people, 74.5% of unintended pregnanciesARMGBRITALVAPERRUSSGPSTPSVNTJKUSAUZB

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted+0.5183.2e-672
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.4772.3e-572
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.4911.4e-572
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income+0.4459.9e-572

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 72 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: +0.027 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.427 (without STP) to +0.522 (without ITA). 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: STP (-0.064).

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 Asia42+0.30
Latin America & Caribbean17+0.28

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 third24+0.64
Middle third24+0.64
Richest third24+0.07

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
Christians54+0.44

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 = +0.480 after dropping 2 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 0years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Not enough history inside each country to look at this over time. That needs countries measured for several years in a row, and at least one of these measures is measured too rarely.

The data


marriages per 1,000 people
% of unintended pregnancies		Years
Tajikistan TJK8.871%2019
Russian Federation RUS8.5471.8%2013, 2019
Uzbekistan UZB7.3180.2%2024, 2019
Sri Lanka LKA6.8772.3%2023, 2019
Albania ALB6.7459.2%2024, 2019
Barbados BRB6.4258%2022, 2019
Hong Kong SAR, China HKG6.3346.1%2023, 2019
Singapore SGP6.327.5%2024, 2019
Kyrgyz Republic KGZ6.2479.2%2024, 2019
Viet Nam VNM6.1774.5%2024, 2019
Kazakhstan KAZ6.1382.1%2024, 2019
Jamaica JAM6.1343.9%2018, 2019
Moldova MDA6.170.6%2024, 2019
United States USA6.134.2%2023, 2019
North Macedonia MKD6.0363.4%2024, 2019

United Nations Statistics Division, Demographic Yearbook, 2017 to 2024 editions: tables of marriages and crude marriage rates, of divorces and crude divorce rates, by urban/rural residence, and of legally induced abortions. Women aged 15 to 49 from the World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0).
Bearak, J. M., Popinchalk, A., Beavin, C. et al. (2022), 'Country-specific estimates of unintended pregnancy and abortion incidence: a global comparative analysis of levels in 2015-2019', BMJ Global Health 7(3), e007151. Guttmacher Institute. Supplementary appendix, tables A3-A5.

Sources

Marriage rate (UN)

Crude marriage rate, countries with complete registration

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

Marriages registered in the year per 1,000 people, from each country's civil register, as published in the UN Demographic Yearbook. Only countries whose register the UN rates as at least 90% complete are included. That leaves out most of Africa and much of South Asia, where many marriages are religious or customary and never registered, so the countries here lean toward places with strong record-keeping. Countries whose figures include visitors' weddings (Seychelles, about 30 per 1,000, and the Bahamas) are left out, since they show a wedding industry rather than how often residents marry. So is Equatorial Guinea, whose register is far too thin to be complete. Each yearly edition covers five years; where they overlap, the newest is used, since countries revise. Where both exist it matches the OECD series almost exactly (r = 0.998), so the two are treated as one measure, not two findings. The low points in 2020 are the pandemic. A few small island territories, such as the Turks and Caicos Islands (11 to 16 per 1,000), probably count visitors' weddings without saying so. No "better" direction is set: it describes how people live.

Unintended pregnancies ending in abortion

Share of unintended pregnancies ending in abortion (model estimate, 2015-2019)

Guttmacher Institute (Bearak et al. 2022, BMJ Global Health) · CC BY-NC 4.0 · updated one edition (2015-2019 estimates, published 2022)

Of the unintended pregnancies in the abortion rate's model, the share that ended in abortion, averaged over 2015-2019 (Guttmacher Institute). The rest ended in a birth or a miscarriage. Like the other two, it is an estimate with a range. No "better" direction is set.

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 6 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 14,952 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Marriage rate (UN) and Unintended pregnancies ending in abortion

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

More links with Marriage rate (UN) or Unintended pregnancies ending in abortion