Average age at marriage and divorce: Social Trends 33
Average age at marriage and divorce: Social Trends 33
The age at which people get married for the first time has continued to increase. In 1961 the average age at first marriage in England and Wales was 25.6 years for men and 23.1 years for women; by 2000 this had risen to 30.5 and 28.2 years, respectively.
Generally, women marry men older than themselves and in 2000 the average age gap was just over two years. The age at first marriage has risen in all EU countries over the last 40 years and the average age at first marriage for the EU as a whole has risen by almost 4 years since 1961. Differences exist between the countries. In 2000 the country with the youngest newly-weds was Portugal, while Sweden had the oldest. The growth in pre-marital cohabitation partly explains the trend for later marriage, but other factors, such as increased an...
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