De facto marital status (that is, including cohabitation) was ascertained by combining the information on marital status with whether the respondent was currently cohabiting. Respondents who were single, widowed, divorced or separated but who were cohabiting are here classified as cohabiting - rather than by their marital status.

In 2000, the de facto marital status of adults aged 16 and over was as follows:

• 54% of men and 51% of women were married
• 9% of both men and women were cohabiting
• 27% of men and 19% of women were single
• 3% of men and 12% of women were widowed
• 7% of men were either divorced or separated, compared with 9% of women.

It should be noted that the proportions of men and women in each marital status category is one of the estimates that shows a marked difference following the introduction of weighting for non-response. Weighting causes a downward revision of the proportion of married men and women and an upward revision of single men and women, with a greater effect for men. This is to be expected since young people, in particular men, are one of the groups who are under-represented in the unweighted responding sample.