In 2023, the divorce rate in Germany lay at about 35.74 percent. The highest divorce rate at almost 52 percent was recorded in 2005. Since then, divorce rates have ranged between 30 and 50 percent. The divorce rate compares the number of marriages with the number of divorces in the same period under review. Accordingly, the divorce rate does not provide any information about the ‘divorce risk’ of a particular marriage cohort, as the divorces do not relate to a marriage year.

In 2023, around a quarter of all divorces in Germany were in marriages lasting between six and ten years.16.6 percent of marriages ended between zero and five years after they began.

According to the 2020 UNIDOMO questionnaire, Portugal clearly led the list of European countries with the highest divorce rate per 100 marriages. With 91.5 divorces the Portuguese Republic led the list, followed by Spain and Luxembourg. All three countries boast a significantly higher share than the other European countries, each reporting a divorce rate over 80 divorces.

A different way to look at Portugal

While Portugal clearly has the most divorces per 100 marriages, looking at divorce rates per 1.000 inhabitants in other European countries alters the picture of the country as one unsettled by significant numbers of divorces. With nearly 1.7 divorces per 1,000 inhabitants Portugal has roughly the same divorce rate as Germany and the Netherlands. Interesting is furthermore that although marriages in Portugal tend to result in divorce lightly more often as in Luxembourg (80.3%), the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg experienced a 0.6 point higher divorce rate.

What about the rest of the World?

While compared with Latin American countries like Guatemala or Peru, ranked among the countries with the lowest divorce rates in the world, Luxembourg’s divorce rate seems excessive. However, when compared with divorce rates (per 1.000 inhabitants) of countries like the United States (2.7) or China (3.5) divorce rates from Luxembourg and Europe are not out of the ordinary.

2023, there were 129,008 divorces in Germany. This was a decrease compared to the previous and the lowest figure for a number of years. Figures increased steadily since the 1950s and peaking in the early 2000s. In Germany, the term divorce refers to the formal legal dissolution of a marriage. From 2019, the figures also include divorces of same-sex marriages.

In 2023, there were around 2.8 marriages for every divorce in Germany. Figures peaked in the 1960s, then have generally been decreasing, apart from in 1979, when there was a large peak.

In 2023, there were around 65,600 divorces in which children were involved in Germany. Although this was a decrease compared to the previous year, the number of divorces of couples with and without children has remained fairly similar over the time period.

The system of social indicators for the Federal Republic of Germany - developed in its original version as part of the SPES project under the direction of Wolfgang Zapf - provides quantitative information on levels, distributions and changes in quality of life, social progress and social change in Germany from 1950 to 2013, i.e. over a period of more than sixty years. With the approximately 400 objective and subjective indicators that the indicator system comprises in total, it claims to measure welfare and quality of life in Germany in a differentiated way across various areas of life and to observe them over time. In addition to the indicators for 13 areas of life, including income, education and health, a selection of cross-cutting global welfare measures were also included in the dashboard, i.e. general welfare indicators such as life satisfaction, social isolation or the Human Development Index. Based on available data from official statistics and survey data, time series were compiled for all indicators, ideally with annual values from 1950 to 2013. Around 90 of the indicators were marked as "key indicators" in order to highlight central dimensions of welfare and quality of life across the various areas of life. The further development and expansion, regular maintenance and updating as well as the provision of the data of the system of social indicators for the Federal Republic of Germany have been among the tasks of the Center for Social Indicator Research, which is based at GESIS, since 1987. For a detailed description of the system of social indicators for the Federal Republic of Germany, see the study description under "Other documents".
The data for the area of life ´population´ is made up as follows:

Agglomeration and migration: external migration, number of immigration, net migration, share of immigration from the EU in total immigration, number of asylum seekers per 10,000 inhabitants. Population density: population density, population density in independent cities, population density in large cities, population density in communities with less than 5000 inhabitants. Regional mobility: internal migration. Burden on the working population: total burden of support (inactive population ratio), burden of supporting children (children´s quotient), burden of supporting students (education quotient), burden of supporting older people (old-age quotient). Population size, growth and structure: Population size (resident population (end of year), population growth rate, natural population growth), generative behavior (net production rate, combined birth rate, mean age at first child), population structure (proportion of the population under 15 years, proportion of the population between 15 and 15). y. and 65 y., proportion of the population over 65 years of age), ethnic structure and integration (proportion of foreigners, proportion of foreigners from the European Union, proportion of marriages between Germans and foreigners, consent for foreigners to remain). Forms of cohabitation: propensity to marry (marriage rate of 35 to 45 year olds, marriage age of single people, combined first marriage rate (= total marriage rate)), importance of stability of marriage and family (out-of-wedlock birth rate, divorce rate, combined divorce rate, remarriage rate), lifestyles and family types (Proportion of single-person households, proportion of incomplete families, proportion of non-marital partnerships, families with children, families with one child, families with two children, families with three children, families with four or more children), widowhood disparity (gender ratio of widowed people aged 65 and over). year of life), subjective evaluation of the family (ideal number of children, importance of the family, family satisfaction). Household structure: contraction tendency (proportion of 3- and 4-generation households, proportion of the population in large households (5 or more people)), solitarization (proportion of the population in single-person households).

Social and economic figures for 67 large West German cities. The data aggregated at city level have been collected for most topics over several years, but not necessarily over the entire reference time period.

Topics: 1. Situation of the city: surface area of the city; fringe location in the Federal Republic.

1. Residential population: total residential population; German and foreign residential population.

2. Population movement:live births; deaths; influx; departures; birth rate; death rate; population shifts; divorce rate; migration rate; illegitimate births.

3. Education figures: school degrees; occupational degrees; university degrees.

4. Wage and income: number of taxpayers in the various tax classes as well as municipality income tax revenue in the respective classes; calculated income figures, such as e.g. inequality of income distribution, mean income or mean wage of employees as well as standard deviation of these figures; GINI index.

5. Gross domestic product and gross product: gross product altogether; gross product organized according to area of business; gross domestic product; employees in the economic sectors.

6. Taxes and debts: debt per resident; income tax and business tax to which the municipality is entitled; municipality tax potential and indicators for municipality economic strength.

7. Debt repayment and management expenditures: debt repayment, interest expenditures, management expenditures and personnel expenditures.

8. From the ´BUNTE´ City Test of 1979 based on 100 respondents per city averages of satisfaction were calculated. satisfaction with: central location of the city, the number of green areas, historical buildings, the number of high-rises, the variety of the citizens, openness to the world, the dialect spoken, the sociability, the density of the traffic network, the OEPNV prices {local public passenger transport}, the supply of public transportation, provision with culture, the selection for consumers, the climate, clean air, noise pollution, the leisure selection, real estate prices, the supply of residences, one´s own payment, the job market selection, the distance from work, the number of one´s friends, contact opportunities, receptiveness of the neighbors, local recreational areas, sport opportunities and the selection of further education possibilities.

9. Traffic and economy: airport and Intercity connection; number of kilometers of subway available, kilometers of streetcar, and kilometers of bus lines per resident; car rate; index of traffic quality; commuters; property prices; prices for one´s own home; purchasing power.

10. Crime: recorded total crime and classification according to armed robbery, theft from living-rooms, of automobiles as well as from motor vehicles, robberies and purse snatching; classification according to young or adult suspects with these crimes; crime stress figures. 12. Welfare: welfare recipients and social expenditures; proportion of welfare recipients in the total population and classification according to German and foreign recipients; aid with livelihood; expenditures according to the youth welfare law; kindergarten openings; culture expenditures per resident. 13. Foreigners: proportion of foreigners in the residential population.

11. Students: number of German students and total number of students; proportion of students in the residential population.

12. Unemployed: unemployment rate; unemployed according to employment office districts and employment office departments.

13. Places of work: workers employed in companies, organized according to area of business.

14. Government employees: full-time, part-time and total government employees of federal government, states and municipalities as well as differentiated according to workers, employees, civil servants and judges.

15. Employees covered by social security according to education and branch of economy: proportion of various education levels in the individual branches of the economy.

The number of first marriages in Germany peaked in the 1960s and has generally decreased since then. Interestingly, however, the number of remarriages has remained fairly consistent and much lower than the number of first marriages. In 2023, there were approximately 247,000 first marriages, slightly less than in the previous year.

English:

The data set contains 503 variables and 624 observations on suicides and suicide rates as well as on demographic, socio-structural, infrastructure and crime statistics on the canton and national level for the years 1952 to 1990. The information was recorded and processed by GDR’s Central Bureau of Statistics on a yearly basis. The statistical yearbooks of the GDR and various files of the Federal Archive were used as the sources of this data.

The demographic statistics include the population distribution by gender and age-groups, the incidence of deaths, homicides, births, stillbirths, as well as infant mortality and domestic migration rates by year and administrative district. The socio-structural information includes marriage and divorce rates, population distribution by education, employment and religious denomination, as well as the number of members and candidates of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany by year and district. The infrastructure data contains information on population density, residential housing construction and retail sales by year and administrative canton. The annual numbers of offenders of criminally liable age and convicted persons in the districts that come from the GDR crime statistics were included in the data set from the GDR crime statistics.

Missing values indicate that no information could be found for the given year or region. However, the missing information on the distribution by gender and age-groups, as well as suicide rates by age-group can be estimated using the attached do-files. A detailed description of how the missing values have been determined can be found in the document “Imputation und Standardisierung.pdf”. The do-files and the description are available in a zip file below.

Deutsch:

Dieser Datensatz umfasst 503 Variablen und 624 Beobachtungen. Er beinhaltet Informationen zu Suizidzahlen sowie demographische, sozialstrukturelle, infrastrukturelle Statistiken und Kriminalstatistiken in den Bezirken der DDR sowie des gesamten Landes von 1952 bis 1990. In der DDR war die Staatliche Zentralverwaltung für Statistik (SZS) für die Sammlung und Aufbereitung der verschiedenen Jahresstatistiken zuständig, weshalb die langen Zeitreihen größtenteils aus dem Primärbestand der SZS ermittelt und anschließend vergleichbar über die Bezirke und den Zeitverlauf berechnet wurden. Als Recherchequellen dienen die statistischen Jahrbücher der DDR sowie verschiedene Akten des Bundesarchivs.

Die demographischen Statistiken umfassen die jährlichen bezirksspezifischen Verteilungen der Geschlechter, Altersgruppen, Verstorbenen, Ermordeten, Lebendgeborenen, Totgeborenen, gestorbenen Säuglinge und Binnenmigration. Die sozialstrukturellen Informationen umfassen Angaben zu regionalen Verteilungen der Eheschließung, Ehescheidung, Bildung, Beschäftigung und Konfession sowie Statistiken über die Mitgliedschaft und Kandidatur für eine Mitgliedschaft bei der SED. Die verschiedenen infrastrukturellen Daten umfassen jährliche Statistiken der Bevölkerungsdichte, des Wohnungsbaus und des Einzelhandelsumsatzes in den Bezirken der DDR. Zudem wurden aus der Kriminalstatistik der DDR die jährliche Anzahl der strafmündigen Täter und der Verurteilten in den Bezirken in den Datensatz aufgenommen.

Missings werden in dem Datensatz ausgewiesen, wenn für bestimmte Jahre oder Regionen keine Zahlen recherchiert werden konnten bzw. die Informationen nicht erhoben wurden. Fehlende Suizidzahlen und fehlende Bevölkerungszahlen in bestimmten Altersgruppen können mittels der beigefügten Do-Files geschätzt und importiert werden. Eine ausführliche Beschreibung der Bestimmung der fehlenden Zahlen lassen sich dem Dokument „Imputation und Standardisierung.pdf“ entnehmen. Zudem ist ein unverzerrter Vergleich der Suizidraten über Regionen und Zeit nur anhand von standardisierten Suizidraten möglich. Auch dieses Vorgehen der indirekten Standardisierung ist im genannten Dokument beschrieben und kann anhand der Do-Files repliziert werden. Sie sind unten in einer Zip-Datei verfügbar.

in 2023, on average, women in Germany got married sometime after turning 32 years old. The graph confirms that marriage took place later and later every year. Various reasons may contribute to this development. Life today Women can simply afford, in various senses of the word, to marry later than before. Being unmarried, regardless of age, has mostly ceased to be stigmatized or unusual for women in Germany. This does not exclude pressure, attention or curiosity from others about the topic, or a woman’s relationship status. It also does not exclude the desire of women to get married. However, in general, attitudes have relaxed significantly in recent decades, nor are there any legal restrictions for unmarried women in terms of education, employment, healthcare, renting or owning property. Women’s life expectancy at birth has increased steadily in Germany, with the latest figures citing 83.2 years. It is also not unusual for Germans to have children outside of a marriage. In fact, figures have been climbing annually since the 1990s and in 2023, around a third of children born, were born outside a marriage. Whether this happens due to a decision made mutually, individually or other circumstances, a woman being shunned for having a child out of wedlock is definitely a thing of the past. Changing demographics Marrying at a later age than in the 1990s, when women got married in their mid to late twenties, is also part of a general demographic shift in Germany, such as the increase in single households (though it does not necessarily mean that the person is unmarried, they might be in a long-distance marriage, for example). Women may also still be studying or traveling before their thirties, preferring to concentrate on concluding these chapters in their lives before proceeding to marriage, especially if they do not yet have a full-time job.

In 2020, Germany had aproximately 143,801 divorces taking place, which was the highest in the European Union. France had the second highest number of divorces at 128,043.

English:
The HaSpaD project harmonizes and pools longitudinal data for the analysis of partnership biographies from nine German survey programs. These are in detail:

• The German Family Panel (pairfam), Data file Version 12.0.0
• ALLBUS/GGSS 1980-2016 (Kumulierte Allgemeine Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften / Cumulated German General Social Survey 1980-2016)
• Family Surveys 1988-2000 (Change and Development of Forms of Family Life in West Germany (Survey of Families), Family and Partner Relations in Eastern Germany (Survey of Families), Change and Development of Ways of Family Life - 2nd Wave (Survey of Families), Change and Development of Families` Way of Life - 3rd Wave (Family Survey))
• Mannheim Divorce Study 1996
• German Fertility and Family Survey (FFS) 1992
• German Life History Studies (Courses of Life and Historical Change in East Germany (Life History Study LV DDR), Courses of Life and Social Change: Courses of Life and Welfare Development (Life History Study LV-West I), Courses of Life and Social Change: The Between-the-War Cohort in Transition to Retirement (Life History Study LV-West II A - Personal Interview), Courses of Life and Social Change: The Between-the-War Cohort in Transition to Retirement (Life History Study LV-West II T - Telephone Interview), Courses of Life and Social Change: Access to Occupation in Employment Crisis (Life History Study LV-West III), East German Life Courses After Unification (Life History Study LV-Ost Panel), East German Life Courses After Unification (Life History Study LV Ost 71), Education, Training, and Occupation: Life Courses of the 1964 and 1971 Birth Cohorts in West Germany (Life History Study LV-West 64/71), Early Careers and Starting a Family: Life Courses of the 1971 Birth Cohorts in East and West Germany (Life History Study LV-Panel 71))
• Generations & Gender Survey (German Subsample) GGS Waves 1 and 2
• The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), German Sample (Share Waves 1, 2, and 3) and
• Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), data for the years 1984-2018.
  

The HaSpaD projects does not distribute own datasets. Instead, the HaSpaD syntax package allows to harmonize and pool all German surveys with partnership biographical data which are available for secondary use via a research data repository. Data access to these source data must be arranged autonomously by users of the HaSpaD syntax. The scripts harmonize and pool the partnership biographical data, as well as additional variables on respondents and their partnerships. These include, for example, gender, religious affiliation, and nationality of the respondents. The pooled data set provides the opportunity to analyse previously unanswered questions on marriage and partnership stability from a historical and life course theoretical perspective, in particular on the long-term increase in divorce rates and on social changes in risk factors for separation. In addition, methodological developments of research syntheses will be facilitated.


Deutsch:
Das HaSpaD-Projekt harmonisiert und kumuliert Längsschnittdaten zur Analyse von Partnerschaftsbiografien aus neun deutschen Umfrageprogrammen. Dies sind im Einzelnen:

• Beziehungs- und Familienpanels pairfam, Release 12.0
• Kumulierte Allgemeine Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften (ALLBUS / GGSS) 1980-2016
• Familiensurvey 1988 - 2000 (Wandel und Entwicklung familialer Lebensformen in Westdeutschland (Familiensurvey), Familie und Partnerbeziehungen in Ostdeutschland (Familiensurvey), Wandel und Entwicklung familialer Lebensformen - 2. Welle (Familiensurvey), Wandel und Entwicklung familialer Lebensformen - 3. Welle (Familiensurvey))
• Mannheimer Scheidungsstudie 1996
• Deutscher Fertility and Family Survey 1992
• Lebensverlaufsstudien (Lebensverläufe und historischer Wandel in Ostdeutschland (Lebensverlaufsstudie LV-DDR), Lebensverläufe und gesellschaftlicher Wandel: Lebensverläufe und Wohlfahrtsentwicklung (Lebensverlaufsstudie LV-West I), Lebensverläufe und gesellschaftlicher Wandel: Die Zwischenkriegskohorte im Übergang zum Ruhestand (Lebensverlaufsstudie LV-West II A - Persönliche Befragung), Lebensverläufe und gesellschaftlicher Wandel: Die Zwischenkriegskohorte im Übergang zum Ruhestand (Lebensverlaufsstudie LV-West II T - Telefonische Befragung), Lebensverläufe und gesellschaftlicher Wandel: Berufszugang in der Beschäftigungskr...

This statistic depicts the global views on divorce as of 2013. Half or more people in India, Kenya, Pakistan, Uganda, and Ghana say that getting a divorce is morally unacceptable. In contrast, relatively few hold this view in Egypt (7%), Germany (7%), Jordan (6%), France (5%) and Spain (4%). The divorce rate in the United States can be accessed here.

In 2023, according to a survey by ElitePartner, the most common reason women wanted to keep their surname after they got married was because they had a stronger attachment to their own. 31 percent did so because of emancipation and equal rights.

Since the mid-2000s the average age at first wedding in France increased gradually, for both men and women. It seems to be common for the first marriage to be celebrated later and later in Western countries. For example, the median age at first marriage in the United States went from 26.8 years old for males and 25 years old for females in 1997, up to 30.3 years old for males and 28.4 for females in 2019. Same thing occurred in Europe where Sweden was the country where the median age at first wedding was the oldest in 2019.

French people wait longer to marry

According to the source, in 2004, the average age at first wedding for French men was 30.8 compared to 28.8 for women. If men still tend to be older than women at first marriage, the average age at marriage for both males and females increased from 2004 to 2021. In 2021, men were aged on average 39.2 at their first wedding, compared to 36.8 for women. Most marriages in France happened between men and women despite the implementation of same-sex marriage in 2013. Mean age at gay marriages appear to be even older than in different-sex wedding.

Marriage and divorce in France

Thus, the percentage of married persons in France decreased since 2006, while the share of single and divorced people rose. However, in 2016, France was the second European country with the highest number of marriages behind Germany. On the other hand, like most other Western nations, France also has an important divorce rate. In 2016, the number of French divorces was of 55 per 100 marriages.