This interesting article appeared last week:
Divorce in Australia: What’s the ‘peak age’? And why are more long marriages ending?
Divorce in Australia is changing. Why are couples taking longer to call it quits?
28 February, 2028
If you think sailing through the seven-year itch and beyond means you’ll be cosying up with your beloved til death do you part, think again.
The fact is Australian men and women are divorcing later and later in life, and 20-plus-year marriages make up a growing proportion of the nation’s divorces.
But don’t believe that old chestnut that half of all marriages end in divorce. It’s more likely around three in 10.
Overall, Australia’s divorce rate has been on a steady decline over the 50 years since no-fault divorce was introduced in the 1970s, but a deeper dive into the data offers a fascinating glimpse of how and why Australians are getting together and moving apart.
Divorces dive
Why has Australia’s divorce rate hit an all-time low?
According to the latest available Australian Bureau of Statistics data, it reached its lowest point in 2023, at 2.3 divorces per 1000 residents aged 16 and over. That’s almost half what it was in 1980.
It’s less a sign of growing domestic bliss than a reflection of society’s changing attitudes to marriage, says Australian Institute of Family Studies senior researcher Lixia Qu.
An increasing proportion of divorces in Australia involve marriages of 20 years or more, new research reveals.
“These days most couples live together before getting married – if they marry at all – which was unusual 50 years ago,” says Dr Qu, author of a new report Divorces in Australia, Facts and Figures 2024.
“Being able to ‘try before you buy’ was less of an option for young couples in the 1970s and earlier, due to stigma and societal expectations.”
Dr Qu says despite the declining number of divorces, relationships aren’t necessarily longer these days.
“In 2023, 83 per cent of couples had been living together before marriage, compared to just 16 per cent in 1975. Many couples separate without entering into marriage, which is not captured in the divorce statistics,” she says.
What is ‘peak’ divorce age?
The median age at divorce hasn’t been older since this data started to be collected in the 1970s. For men it is now 47.1 years and for women 44.1 years as at 2023, compared to 35.3 years for men and 32.7 years for women in 1980.
This is a different question from the most likely age to be divorced, which tends to coalesce around younger married people.
For married men it is between 25 and 29 and for married women it is highest at 24 and under, closely followed by the years from 25 to 29.
Younger people who have married at this age may have jumped in when their friends in relationships wait, or choose to live together.
Married or not, those in their 20s, especially their early and mid-20s, are still developing and maturing in various aspects of their life, including their communication with each other. There is also potentially financial pressure given they are still establishing themselves in their careers.
And at this age, uncoupling may be less emotionally complex given many will be able to do so without the complication of children.
All that said, the pattern of divorce across a couple of generations shows that those divorce rates among younger people, especially women, are dropping, while the rate among older people is increasing later in life.
The rise in divorce among 20+ year marriages
In 1980, marriages of less than five years’ duration made up more than 20 per cent of all divorces, but by 2023 that proportion had fallen to 11.7 per cent.
By contrast, 19.8 per cent of all divorces in 1980 involved marriages of 20 years or more, whereas in 2023 it was almost 30 per cent.
Overall, the median duration of a marriage that ends in divorce in Australia is between 12 and 13 years, an increase from 10 years in 1990.
“Compared to 40 or 50 years ago, more women have a degree of financial independence, and they also are more likely to be working, so this gives them more options in terms of staying in a marriage or not,” Dr Qu says.
“Women continue to be worse off than men after separation, with many having stepped back to part-time or no work during their children’s early lives, but often now there is at least some financial foundation to separate.
“Another reason is our longer life expectancy. People, even in long marriages, may feel there should be more to life. They may be looking ahead and thinking I don’t want to be unhappy for decades.
“More people in their 50s and 60s are still working full-time, still looking forward to much more life than perhaps the same people at that age half a century ago,” Dr Qu says.
So is there any sense that the HSC (or VCE) divorce is a real social trend?
Couples with children have an extra layer of complication when their marriage breaks down. About 47 per cent of divorces involve children under the age of 18.
Anecdotes abound of couples saying they’ll stick it out until their youngest finishes high school before separating. Whether this is a good thing for either the couple themselves, or the children, is open to question.
“I don’t have definitive data on the reason more people are leaving marriage after 20-something years, but people do worry about the impact of separation on their children, so along with those other factors around more financial independence for women and a sense that it is not too late to chase happiness, this theory does ring true.”
The AIFS report shows the proportion of divorces involving children under 18 has fallen from over 60 per cent in 1980 to about 47 per cent in 2023.
Are we out of love with marriage?
Apart from the post-Covid catch up of marriages, the marriage rate has continued a long-term decline as couples are increasingly willing to live together without a formal piece of paper.
This is particularly true of people who have been previously married. In 2023, 74 per cent of marriages were the first marriage of both partners, a percentage that has climbed since the early 2000s.
And forget what you’ve heard about a trend back to kids getting married younger these days. The data doesn’t lie, showing a steady increase in the age at which they enter their first marriage.
From 21 for women and 23 for men in the mid-1970s it now sits at 30.1 years for women and 31.4 years for men.
One of the main reasons is that sex before marriage is not as big a deal. Males and females still living in their parents homes are more likely to be able to sleep with each other without it being an issue.
And many more younger couples live together without being married. In fact, the 2021 Census data shows that people aged 25-29 were more likely to be living with a partner and not married than being married. For those living out of their parents’ home it was a pattern even more evident for those in their early 20s.
The delay in marriage may also be put down to men and women spending much more time in post-school education. More people in higher education for longer delays the start of paid jobs that is a critical part of the life course, often coming before marriage.
The high cost of housing also means young men and women are living with their parents longer, which again delays the start of those life-course decisions. This is not just behind the later median age of marriage, but also why the nation’s birthrate is at an all-time low.
The gender gap in median age at first marriage has narrowed in the past few decades from 2.3 years in 1980 to 1.3 years now.
And confirming Dr Qu’s “try before you buy” thesis, by 2023, 83 per cent of couples have lived together before getting married compared to just 23 per cent in 1979.
Here is the link:
I found this a fascinating collection of statistics and well worth a browse!
David.
