Principal assumptions
Assumptions about future marriage rates were based on trends
in the relevant time-series during the period 1992-2002.
Data for 2003 were not available when the projections were
prepared. These rates use the revised population denominators
by marital status published by the Office for National Statistics
on 7 October 2004 which take full account of the results
of the 2001 Census and the subsequent revisions to population
estimates.
The approach for the projections was to extrapolate the
time-series from the last ten years forward but with trends
gradually assumed to diminish so that rates are held constant
from 2013.
For both males and females, first marriage rates are continuing
to fall quite quickly at ages under 30. For people in their
early 30s, the trend is still slightly downward but at older
ages, first marriage rates are very stable.
In general, remarriage rates for the divorced are declining
very slowly at most ages. Remarriage rates for the widowed
are also falling slowly at most ages. However, as remarriages
involving a divorced person are over ten times as numerous
as those involving a widowed person, remarriage rates for
the widowed are of much less significance for the projections.
Click here
for graphs showing actual and assumed first marriage rates,
and remarriage rates for the divorced. There were some
very small errors in the graphs originally published
online. They were replaced with corrected versions on
7 December 2006. For more details contact natpopproj@ons.gsi.gov.uk
Variant
assumptions
The high and low marriage variants assume that marriage
rates will gradually diverge from those assumed in the principal
projection, so that from 2018 onwards first marriage rates
differ by ± 15 per cent and remarriage rates by ±
10 per cent, at all ages, from those assumed in the principal
projection. The greater margin of uncertainty assumed for
first marriage reflects, at younger ages, the continuing
quick decline in marriage rates and, at older ages, the
uncertainty concerning how much of this decline will be
offset by people marrying later in life.
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