placestats

Marriage rate vs. Political rights (FH)

Fades after adjusting for income

Across 46 countries, Marriage rate and Political rights (FH) 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 = +0.61, which could easily be chance (q = 0.085, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). Caution: leave-one-out range spans 0.20 in r.

Comparing countries across the middle half of political rights (fh), 1 to 2 points, marriage rate is 0.703 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 0.815 marriages per 1,000 people.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.579p = 2.5e-5 · 46 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.611p = 8.2e-6 · likely range [+0.39, +0.77]
p, allowing for regions0.015standard error 0.150 · 5 regions
Check for luck (q)0.085across 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.

Marriage rate · marriages per 1,000 peoplelink with income -0.06 · independent
Political rights (FH) · rating (1-7, 1 = most free)link with income -0.48 · moderate

“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 · marriages per 1,000 people →Political rights (FH) · rating (1-7, 1 = most free) →1.399.617Argentina: 2.79 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Australia: 4.89 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Austria: 5.24 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Belgium: 4.2 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Bulgaria: 3.9 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Canada: 2.6 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Switzerland: 4.7 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Chile: 2.7 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)China: 9.6 marriages per 1,000 people, 7 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Colombia: 1.39 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Costa Rica: 4.39 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Cyprus: 8.9 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Czechia: 5.1 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Germany: 4.7 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Denmark: 5.34 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Spain: 3.7 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Estonia: 5.3 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Finland: 3.9 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)France: 3.6 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)United Kingdom: 1.4 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Greece: 4.2 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Croatia: 4.7 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Hungary: 6.6 marriages per 1,000 people, 3 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Ireland: 3.3 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Iceland: 5 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Israel: 5.46 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Italy: 3.2 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Japan: 4.1 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Korea, Rep.: 3.7 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Lithuania: 5.7 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Luxembourg: 3.8 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Latvia: 6.3 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Mexico: 3.9 marriages per 1,000 people, 3 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Malta: 4.8 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Netherlands: 4 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Norway: 3.8 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)New Zealand: 3.68 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Poland: 4.2 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Portugal: 3.5 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Romania: 6.2 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Russian Federation: 8.5 marriages per 1,000 people, 7 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Slovak Republic: 5.4 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Slovenia: 3.2 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Sweden: 4.6 marriages per 1,000 people, 1 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)Turkiye: 6.8 marriages per 1,000 people, 5 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)United States: 6.2 marriages per 1,000 people, 2 rating (1-7, 1 = most free)CANCHNCOLCYPGBRLTULVARUSTUR

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted+0.5792.5e-546
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.2860.05446
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.6118.2e-646
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income+0.3010.04546

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: -0.032 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.492 (without CHN) to +0.695 (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: CHN (-0.120).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.
  • leave-one-out range spans 0.20 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+0.46

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+0.84
Middle third15-0.05
Richest third15+0.46

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+0.45

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 = +0.261 after dropping 4 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 = +0.073, 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 marriage rate moved did not tend to see their political rights (fh) move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.611for comparison
Within countries+0.185each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.073q = 0.587 · 44 countries
Year-on-year changes+0.069q = 0.051

1,367 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: 43% for Marriage rate, 41% for Political rights (FH). 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+10years Political rights (FH) trails Marriage rate →lag -10: r = -0.141 (n = 966)lag -9: r = -0.155 (n = 1,007)lag -8: r = -0.151 (n = 1,048)lag -7: r = -0.124 (n = 1,089)lag -6: r = -0.092 (n = 1,129)lag -5: r = -0.051 (n = 1,169)lag -4: r = -0.027 (n = 1,210)lag -3: r = -0.008 (n = 1,250)lag -2: r = 0.015 (n = 1,290)lag -1: r = 0.036 (n = 1,329)lag +0: r = 0.073 (n = 1,367)lag +1: r = 0.051 (n = 1,367)lag +2: r = 0.058 (n = 1,367)lag +3: r = 0.052 (n = 1,367)lag +4: r = 0.044 (n = 1,331)lag +5: r = 0.012 (n = 1,294)lag +6: r = -0.006 (n = 1,252)lag +7: r = -0.035 (n = 1,209)lag +8: r = -0.044 (n = 1,165)lag +9: r = -0.051 (n = 1,121)lag +10: r = -0.058 (n = 1,077)

Same year (lag 0): +0.073. 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 -9) is higher than the same-year one by 0.08. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 21 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


marriages per 1,000 people
rating (1-7, 1 = most free)		Years
China CHN9.672012, 2025
Cyprus CYP8.912019, 2025
Russian Federation RUS8.572013, 2025
Turkiye TUR6.852022, 2025
Hungary HUN6.632022, 2025
Latvia LVA6.312022, 2025
United States USA6.222022, 2025
Romania ROU6.222022, 2025
Lithuania LTU5.712022, 2025
Israel ISR5.4622021, 2025
Slovak Republic SVK5.422022, 2025
Denmark DNK5.3412022, 2025
Estonia EST5.312022, 2025
Austria AUT5.2412022, 2025
Czechia CZE5.112022, 2025

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
Freedom House, Freedom in the World

Sources

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.

Political rights (FH)

Political rights rating

Freedom House · via Our World in Data · Free to use with attribution · updated annual

Scored 1 to 7, where 1 is most free. That is the reverse of most measures on this site. Covers elections, the freedom to form competing parties, and how government works. Freedom House changed its method in 2003, adding scores for smaller categories. But the 1-7 ratings are still the published series that runs through all the years.

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 Marriage rate and Political rights (FH)

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

More links with Marriage rate or Political rights (FH)