Average age of 1st marriage: Grooms: 33.6 years, Brides: 32.0 and other related stats

iptba

The Central Statistics Office on Tuesday released some data on Marriages and Civil Partnerships. I thought it was interesting enough so I thought I'd post some extracts.

I've highlighted the age of first marriage in heading, rather than what the media concentrated on, as I think that is more interesting - the average age for all marriages includes people on their second, third, etc. marriages which somewhat artificially increases the average age of marriage.

http://cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/mcp/marriagesandcivilpartnerships2013/#.VC3DgJRkTmc

Groom older than bride in 63% of marriages

The average age of grooms and brides in 2013 was 34.9 years and 32.8 years respectively. The average age of grooms marrying for the first time was 33.6 years and for brides the average age was 32.0 years. See tables 22 and 23.
In 2013, the groom was older than the bride in almost 63% of marriages. This was generally witnessed across all age groups except in the case of grooms under 25, where the bride was older in almost 41% of marriages. See tables 7, 8.

In 2013, 3% of grooms were under the age of 25 and 36% of grooms were aged 35 and over on their wedding day. For brides, over 5% were under the age of 25 and almost 26% were aged 35 and over on their wedding day. See table 1.

It goes on to talk about how ages have increased over the years

Over 88% of marriages were first time marriages

In 2013, 88% (18,241) of marriages were the first marriage for both the groom and bride. The breakdown between grooms and brides was 19,014 (almost 92%) grooms and 19,313 (over 93%) brides marrying for the first time. See tables 17, 22 and 23.

There were 2,230 marriages involving at least one divorced person in 2013, including 430 marriages where both parties were divorced. Civil ceremonies accounted for 1,712 of these marriages, 188 were Roman Catholic ceremonies, and the remaining 330 were other religious ceremonies. See table 17.

Couples residing outside Ireland before marriage account for almost 10% of marriages

Marriages where both the bride and groom were residing in Ireland before marriage accounted for nearly 88% (18,175) of marriages. In 2013, 2,053 (10%) marriages involved both the bride and groom living outside the State before marriage.

Almost one in four marriages were between brides and grooms of the same socio-economic group

In 2013, almost 24% (4,908) of all marriages involved the bride and groom being of the same socio-economic group.

Number of divorces granted increased by nearly 3%
There were 2,949 divorces granted by the Circuit Court and the High Court in 2013. This was an increase of 57 on the 2012 figure.

The Civil Partnership is quite short so here is it all (minus the tables)

Civil Partnerships Legislation

Civil Partnerships, introduced by the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010, enabled same-sex couples to obtain legal recognition of their relationship and this regulation was enacted on the 1st January 2011.

Over 69% of Civil Partnerships resident in Leinster
There were 338 civil partnership ceremonies in 2013, 208 male unions and 130 female unions. almost 74% (249) of these same-sex couples reside in the Leinster area with 139 same-sex partnerships (41%) living in Dublin City and a further 22% residing in the greater Dublin area. Excluding the Dublin area, Cork County had the highest number of civil partnerships registered in 2013 (18) and accounted for over 5% of all civil partnerships registered in that year. In contrast, Cavan, Leitrim, Longford, Monaghan, Offaly, Sligo or South Tipperary had no civil partnerships registered in 2013. See Table 1A.

Previous Marital Status of partners in registered Civil Partnerships
Of the 676 individual partners, 636 or 94% were previously single while 37 (5%) were divorcees and 2 were former Civil Partners.

Average Age of Partner in Civil Partnership higher than in Marriages
The average age of partner in civil partnership couples in 2013 was 39.3 years, the average age of male partner being 38.5 (average age of groom in marriage is 34.9) and female partner slightly higher at 40.6 (average age of bride in marriage 32.8). See Tables 2A, 2B and 2C.

Of all the male partnerships, over 41% indicate that there is a 1- 4 year difference in ages. Almost 49% of female partnerships indicate that there is 1-4 year age gap between couples. Over 5% of males and nearly 8% of female partnerships show no age difference between partners. See Table 6A.