A couple at the altar during an overnight mass wedding ceremony at Kallio Church in Helsinki in August 2018. Statistics Finland is forecasting based on marriage statistics from last year that fewer than half of Finns will get married before turning 50. (Roni Rekomaa – Lehtikuva)
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FEWER THAN HALF of Finns are expected to get married before the age of 50.
Statistics Finland in November announced it is estimating that if the trend for first marriages remains unchanged from last year, 50 per cent of unmarried women and 45 per cent of unmarried men will get married before reaching the half-century mark.
Although the popularity of marriage has been on the decline for quite some time, the forecast is indicative of a dramatic change in a relatively short period of time, indicating that most people might not get married in their lifetime.
Statistics from 2008 were used to estimate that 76 per cent of unmarried women and 70 per cent of unmarried men would get married before turning 50. Statistics Finland is currently estimating that 53 per cent of women and 50 per cent of men will get married in their lifetime, both shares representing a drop of roughly 25 percentage points from the estimate based on data from 2008.
The statistics point to the status of the marriage institution being in jeopardy, summarised Helsingin Sanomat.
A total of 20,320 intersex marriages, three-quarters of which were first marriages, were registered in Finland in 2023, a drop of 1,200 from 2022. The average age for marriage stood at 33 years for women and 34 years for men. The number of same-sex couples who tied the knot fell by 50 from the previous year to 373.
International marriages have not become more common, with 6.5 per cent of Finnish women and 6 per cent of Finnish men exchanging wows with a foreign partner.
A little over half of couples who got married last year opted for a non-denominational, civil ceremony, the statistics also reveal.
In Finland, divorce rates have remained largely unchanged since the 1990s, with about a fifth of intersex marriages ending in a divorce after eight years and about a quarter after 11 years. For women, the first marriage is still more likely to end in the death of the husband (45%) than divorce (35%).
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
