Divorce rates are the lowest on record and marriages are lasting longer, according to new data that reflects an increasingly selective approach to marriage and the ongoing effects of the Covid pandemic.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2024 marriages and divorces figures, released on Wednesday, reflect a downward trajectory of both marriage and divorce rates over the past two decades.
But within the data lies a case for romance: while fewer people were getting married, marriages were both lasting longer and less likely to end in divorce.
In 2004, the marriage rate – measured per 1,000 residents over the age of 16 – was 7.1. Twenty years later, in 2024, the rate was 5.5, the same as the year before.
Last year, Australia’s divorce rate was 2.1, down from 2.3 in 2023. The number of divorces fell 3% from 2023 to 2024.
Meanwhile, marriages lasted for a median of 13.2 years – up from 12.1 in 2020 and 13 last year.
At the same time, we’re marrying and getting divorced later in life. In 2024, the median marriage age was 32.8 years for men and 31.2 for women. The median age for men to divorce was 47.1 years, while for women it was 44.1.
And, while younger couples were divorcing less, divorces in the above 60 age category were rising.
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There were 2% more marriages in 2024 compared to the year before – a figure that doubled to 4.1% for couples of the same or non-binary gender.
More same-sex female couples were married and divorced than male couples, while same-sex and non-binary divorces were slightly up from 1.4% of all divorces in 2023 to 1.6% in 2024.
Steep declines then a spike in marriage rates from 2020 to 2022 were a direct impact of Covid restrictions, while the pandemic saw a spike in divorce rates in 2021.
Lauren Moran, the head of health and vital statistics at the ABS, said the changing divorce rate was “a complex picture” but “2024 saw the lowest divorce rate recorded”.
She said divorce rates were heavily impacted by court administrative processes and that while the number of divorces granted was between 47,000 and 50,000 a year in recent years, fewer marriages meant there were fewer divorces.
“We are seeing declining divorce rates in younger couples, but increasing divorce rates in older couples. When marriages decreased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic, the largest decreases were in marriages of younger people,” she said.
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Older couples were more likely to have a longer marriage, which impacted the median length of marriage, she said.
She said there was “no clear pattern in same-gender divorce rates yet” and that the increases were “small numbers”.
Dr Jan Kabatek, a senior research fellow the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, said the declining divorce rate reflected a more selective approach to marriage.
“Fewer people are getting married and the people who are getting married are usually the ones who are more committed, either through religion or because they are older and more experienced,” he said.
He said the pandemic continued to contribute to a lower divorce rate.
“The people who might have got divorced in 2023/2024 already got divorced during Covid,” he said. “If a lot of people call it quits in 2021, the couples who survived later also have longer marriage durations. Fundamentally, the pool of people who remain married has changed.”
He also commented on the most popular day to marry, according to the ABS: 1,773 marriages took place on 24/02/2024. His own research on marriages on “specifically pleasing dates” found those unions were 25% more likely to end in divorce.
The statistics align with an Australian Institute of Family Studies report that in February found the divorce rate had in 2023 fallen to its lowest level since the implementation of the 1975 Family Law Act.
