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Marriage in the UK - Facts and Figures

Marriage in the UK - Facts and Figures

6^th August 2026

In brief: In 2023, 224,402 marriages were registered in England and Wales - 44 per cent fewer than fifty years earlier - while the United Kingdom's population has grown from 56 to 67 million. The marriage rate for women aged 20 to 24 has fallen 97 per cent since 1972, and for men of the same age the fall is 98. Fewer than half of adults are now married or in a civil partnership. Religious ceremonies, half of all weddings in 1992, are now 15 per cent of the total - around one wedding in seven. Meanwhile cohabiting-couple families have grown to 3.5 million, and the median age at marriage is the highest in recorded history. Yet the official record holds two overlooked facts - more than 83 per cent of couples who married in 2013 had not divorced by their tenth anniversary, and large majorities of the unmarried young want to marry. Here are the official statistics for every part of the United Kingdom, each with its source. They are the story of the institution the Coalition for Marriage exists to champion - marriage, the lifelong union of one man and one woman, the gold standard for families and society.

HOW MANY MARRIAGES - AND THE SCALE OF THE FALL

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) bulletin Marriages and civil partnerships in England and Wales: 2023, released on 18 November 2025, records 231,949 marriages and civil partnerships formed in 2023 - an 8.6 per cent fall on 2022. Opposite-sex marriages made up 216,901 of them, 93.5 per cent of all legal partnerships formed, with 6,179 opposite-sex and 1,368 same-sex civil partnerships alongside - 7,547 in all, leaving 224,402 marriages. The full bulletin is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2023. The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), in its report I Do?, published in February 2026 and built from the ONS's own series, puts the fall in its historical frame - the number of marriages in England and Wales has sunk from 400,000 in 1973 to 224,402 in 2023, while the United Kingdom's population has risen from 56 to 67 million. The report is at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf.

The rates tell the story more sharply than the raw counts. In 2023 there were 18.1 marriages per 1,000 unmarried men and 16.4 per 1,000 unmarried women - each down by around a tenth on 2022 alone, and back on the long downward trend that the pandemic years interrupted. The same bulletin carries the series. The long view is worse. Working from the ONS records back to 1862, the CSJ notes the men's marriage rate had never fallen below 47.7 - its First World War floor - and it now stands at 18.1. Among the young the collapse is steeper still. The marriage rate for women aged 20 to 24 has fallen 97 per cent since 1972, from 249.1 per 1,000 unmarried women to 7.1, and for men of the same age 98 per cent, from 168.5 to 4.1 - see https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf.

Scotland registered 26,955 marriages in 2024 - just 202 more than in 2023 - together with 796 civil partnerships, the highest number since 2006, recorded in National Records of Scotland's Vital Events Reference Tables at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/vital-events-reference-tables-2024/. Northern Ireland's marriages have fallen for two years running - 8,564 in 2022, then 7,494 in 2023 and 7,251 in 2024 - in the Registrar General's annual reports from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), at https://library2.nics.gov.uk/pdf/dof/2023/PDF230105.pdf, https://www.nisra.gov.uk/news/annual-report-registrar-general-2023 and https://www.nisra.gov.uk/publications/registrar-general-annual-report-2024-marriages.

WHO IS MARRIED NOW

The 2021 Census found 46.9 per cent of adults aged 16 and over in England and Wales married or in a civil partnership - down from 58.4 per cent in 1991 - while the share who had never married or been in a civil partnership rose from 26.3 to 37.9 per cent. Among 25 to 29 year olds that share was 84.2 per cent. Among 30 to 34 year olds, 58.9 per cent. The ONS census analysis is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/articles/marriageandcivilpartnershipstatusenglandandwalescensus2021/2023-02-22. And the retreat has continued since - the ONS's annual estimates show the married or civil-partnered share of over-16s slipping from 51.5 per cent in 2014 to 49.5 per cent in 2024, even as the number of people in a civil partnership more than tripled over the decade, from 116,028 to 372,719 - see https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/populationestimatesbymaritalstatusandlivingarrangements/2024.

Marriage now varies sharply by community. Civitas's analysis of the 2021 Census, at https://www.civitas.org.uk/2023/05/10/who-gets-married-and-who-doesnt-evidence-from-the-2021-census/, finds 27 per cent of Black Caribbean and mixed White and Black Caribbean adults married, 43.5 per cent of White British adults, and over 60 per cent of Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi adults. Religion runs with marriage too - adults of the five largest religions are 24 per cent more likely to be married, and 21 per cent less likely to be divorced, than those with no religion. In Northern Ireland, 45 per cent of the population was married or in a civil partnership at the 2021 Census, down from 50 per cent in 2001 - see https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpini/irelandandnorthernireland-ajointcensuspublication2021-2022/maritalandcivilpartnershipstatusandhouseholds/.

OLDER AT THE ALTAR

The ONS puts the 2023 medians among the highest ever recorded - 34.8 years for men and 33.0 for women marrying someone of the opposite sex, with more marriages in the 30 to 34 bracket than any other age group. The bulletin is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2023. The CSJ goes further - the median age was lower in the 1970s than it had been for much of the previous century, and the women's median has now hit 33 for the first time in recorded history, having never exceeded 30 at the turn of the century. The cohort data makes the delay generational. Among women born in 1973, half had married by 31. For women born a decade later, more than half by 35. Northern Ireland's averages - 35.7 for grooms and 33.9 for brides in 2022, against 28.9 and 27.0 three decades earlier - have risen roughly seven years in thirty, in the Registrar General's report at https://library2.nics.gov.uk/pdf/dof/2023/PDF230105.pdf.

Today's newly-weds are older than any generation in recorded history - and there are 44 per cent fewer of them than fifty years ago.

THE COLLAPSE OF RELIGIOUS MARRIAGE

In 1992, religious and civil ceremonies split the wedding year roughly in half. By 2023, 85 per cent of ceremonies were civil and 15 per cent religious - around one wedding in seven. The CSJ's I Do?, compiled from the ONS's 2023 marriage records, traces the fall - 215,711 religious ceremonies in 1973, halved to 107,020 by 1997, then halved again between 2014 (68,028) and 2023 (32,473). Church of England and Church in Wales weddings are down 84 per cent in fifty years, to the lowest number since records began in the 1830s - despite a population four times the size. The figures are at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf.

Scotland shows where the trend leads. In 2024, humanist ceremonies numbered 8,142 - around 30 per cent of all Scottish marriages, more than six times the Church of Scotland's 1,252, with the Roman Catholic Church at 647. National Records of Scotland's tables are at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/vital-events-reference-tables-2024/.

Marriage was once understood as a covenant before God as well as a contract before the state. The severing of that connection - visible in these tables year by year - has removed one of the cultural supports that held marriage up as a lifelong commitment.

DIVORCE - LOWER THAN YOU THINK

There were 102,678 divorces in England and Wales in 2023, plus 1,138 civil partnership dissolutions - a return to pre-pandemic levels after an artificially low 2022, when rates fell to their lowest since 1971, which the ONS says may have been affected by the introduction of the new divorce law. The ONS divorce bulletin is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce/bulletins/divorcesinenglandandwales/2023. The 2023 rate stood at 8.6 divorces per 1,000 married men and 8.5 per 1,000 married women, up from 6.7 and 6.6 in 2022. The median opposite-sex marriage ending in divorce had lasted 12.7 years.

Here the popular wisdom fails. The claim that half of all marriages end in divorce is a myth - of the couples who married in 2013, just 16.8 per cent had divorced by their tenth anniversary. More than 83 per cent had not. And the ONS's own comparison shows the couples who married in 1998 divorced more at the same point - more than one in five (23.6 per cent) within ten years, and 40.7 per cent within twenty-five. The couples who marry now are fewer, but they hold.

The Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 - no-fault divorce - came into effect on 6 April 2022, bringing what the ONS describes as "the removal of grounds for divorce and dissolution" together with new mandatory waiting periods. By 2023, 74.2 per cent of divorces were granted under the new law, nearly three quarters of them on sole applications - the same ONS bulletin carries the figures. The Act's full text is at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2020/11/contents. Scotland's divorces have fallen too - 7,744 in 2022, down from 13,365 in 1985, in the Scottish Government's civil justice statistics at https://www.gov.scot/publications/civil-justice-statistics-scotland-2022-23/pages/5/. Northern Ireland retains fault grounds for divorce - and when its Department of Finance consulted on reform, from June to September 2025, some two thirds of online respondents saw no need to change the law and 80 per cent wanted fault grounds retained. The report, published in January 2026, is at https://www.finance-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2026-01/Consultation%20on%20Divorce%20and%20Dissolution%20of%20Civil%20Partnerships%20-%20Report%20and%20Analysis%20-FINAL.pdf.

THE RISE OF COHABITATION

Cohabiting-couple families stood at 3.5 million across the UK in 2025 - 17.6 per cent of all families - while married couples still make up two thirds of the UK's 19.9 million families, at 65.3 per cent, down from 66.6 per cent a decade earlier. The ONS's Families and households in the UK: 2025 is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2025. Cohabitation before marriage is now all but universal - the ONS recorded its highest level yet in 2022, with nine in ten opposite-sex couples living together before marrying, against 59.6 per cent in 1994, the earliest year measured - see https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2021and2022. And among couples aged 25 to 29 living together in 2021, 72 per cent were unmarried - up from 56 per cent in 2011 - the clearest sign that cohabitation is functioning less as a prelude to marriage and more as its replacement. The CSJ's analysis is at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf. The stability consequences of that shift are set out on our page comparing the two at /cohabitation-vs-marriage.

The generational picture extends to childbearing. Women born in 1979 averaged 1.95 children, and the ONS projects 1.48 for women born in 2008 and 1.43 for a girl born in 2026 - the cohort fertility bulletin, published 10 June 2026, is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/conceptionandfertilityrates/bulletins/childbearingforwomenbornindifferentyearsenglandandwales/2024. Fewer couples make the lifelong promise - and fewer children follow.

BRITAIN IN THE WORLD

The retreat is Western. Across the European Union, the crude marriage rate has more than halved since 1964 - from 8.0 marriages per 1,000 people to 3.9 in 2024. Eurostat's figures are at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Marriage_and_divorce_statistics. England and Wales' own half-century tells the same story - marriages down from 400,000 to 224,402 since 1973, while the United Kingdom has grown by eleven million people. The CSJ sets the two side by side at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf.

WHAT THE NUMBERS MEAN

The Coalition for Marriage reads these tables from a settled conviction. Marriage - the lifelong union of one man and one woman - is the gold standard for families and society, and its retreat is the most consequential social trend in modern British life.

The numbers on this page are not neutral. They record a generation marrying far less often, a decade later, with the religious understanding of the covenant collapsing fastest of all. The loss has landed on the poorest first - the evidence for that is at /why-marriage-matters. When the law then removed the last requirement to justify ending a marriage, in 2022, the state completed a fifty-year signal - that the public, lifelong promise of a man and a woman is a private lifestyle option, not part of the country's basic infrastructure.

Yet the same tables hold two better facts. The marriages that do form are holding better than the 1998 cohort did at the same point - more than 83 per cent of the 2013 cohort had not divorced at ten years. And the desire to marry runs far ahead of the practice. Among unmarried adults under 30, 86 per cent of women and 80 per cent of men say they want to marry, per survey data in the CSJ's I Do? at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf. Three quarters of Gen Z adults - 75 per cent - want to marry, per an Opinium survey of 2,000 people aged 18 to 27 at https://www.charlesrussellspeechlys.com/en/insights/expert-insights/private-client/2025/gen-z-and-milestone-planning/. Yet on present trends only 58 per cent of Gen Z women and 56 per cent of the men will ever marry - the Marriage Foundation's analysis of ONS data is at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/the-collapse-of-marriage-among-gen-z/. The desire has not died. The pathway has been allowed to crumble. Rebuilding it - in law and in culture - is what the Coalition for Marriage exists to do.

Receive the Coalition for Marriage briefings at https://www.c4m.org.uk/subscribe, and support the campaign at https://www.c4m.org.uk/donate.

RELATED PAGES ON C4M.ORG.UK

/marriage-support/why-marriage-matters - the evidence for marriage /what-is-marriage - the nature, purpose and definition of marriage /cohabitation-vs-marriage - the evidence compared /marriage-and-childrens-wellbeing - the research on children /case-for-man-woman-marriage - the definitional case /marriage-and-the-law - the legal framework /marriage-a-public-good - the case for marriage as public policy

KEY SOURCES

Office for National Statistics, Marriages and civil partnerships in England and Wales: 2023, released 18 November 2025. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2023 Office for National Statistics, Marriages in England and Wales: 2021 and 2022, released 20 June 2024. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2021and2022 Office for National Statistics, Divorces and Dissolutions in England and Wales: 2023, released 2 July 2025. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce/bulletins/divorcesinenglandandwales/2023 Office for National Statistics, Families and households in the UK: 2025, released 17 April 2026. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2025 Office for National Statistics, Marriage and civil partnership status in England and Wales: Census 2021. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/articles/marriageandcivilpartnershipstatusenglandandwalescensus2021/2023-02-22 Office for National Statistics, Population estimates by marital status and living arrangements, England and Wales: 2024, released 15 October 2025. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/populationestimatesbymaritalstatusandlivingarrangements/2024 Office for National Statistics, Fertility for those born in different years, England and Wales: 2024, released 10 June 2026. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/conceptionandfertilityrates/bulletins/childbearingforwomenbornindifferentyearsenglandandwales/2024 Centre for Social Justice, I Do? The state of marriage in the United Kingdom, February 2026. https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf National Records of Scotland, Vital Events Reference Tables 2024. https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/vital-events-reference-tables-2024/ Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), Annual Report of the Registrar General 2023. https://www.nisra.gov.uk/news/annual-report-registrar-general-2023 NISRA, Registrar General Annual Report 2022. https://library2.nics.gov.uk/pdf/dof/2023/PDF230105.pdf NISRA, Registrar General Annual Report 2024 - Marriages. https://www.nisra.gov.uk/publications/registrar-general-annual-report-2024-marriages Central Statistics Office (CSO) and NISRA, Ireland and Northern Ireland - a joint census publication 2021-2022: marital and civil partnership status. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpini/irelandandnorthernireland-ajointcensuspublication2021-2022/maritalandcivilpartnershipstatusandhouseholds/ Department of Finance (Northern Ireland), Divorce and the Dissolution of Civil Partnerships - Consultation Report and Analysis, published 22 January 2026. https://www.finance-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2026-01/Consultation%20on%20Divorce%20and%20Dissolution%20of%20Civil%20Partnerships%20-%20Report%20and%20Analysis%20-FINAL.pdf Scottish Government, Civil Justice Statistics in Scotland 2022-23. https://www.gov.scot/publications/civil-justice-statistics-scotland-2022-23/pages/5/ Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2020/11/contents Civitas, Who gets married and who doesn't - evidence from the 2021 Census, May 2023. https://www.civitas.org.uk/2023/05/10/who-gets-married-and-who-doesnt-evidence-from-the-2021-census/ Eurostat, Marriage and divorce statistics, data extracted March 2026. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Marriage_and_divorce_statistics Marriage Foundation, The collapse of marriage among Gen Z, December 2024. https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/the-collapse-of-marriage-among-gen-z/ Opinium for Charles Russell Speechlys, survey of 2,000 UK adults aged 18 to 27. https://www.charlesrussellspeechlys.com/en/insights/expert-insights/private-client/2025/gen-z-and-milestone-planning/