{"id":760351,"date":"2024-03-14T16:51:17","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T14:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=760351"},"modified":"2024-03-14T16:52:48","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T14:52:48","slug":"big-shift-in-marriages-and-divorces-in-south-africa-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/760351\/big-shift-in-marriages-and-divorces-in-south-africa-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Big shift in marriages and divorces in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africans are still losing interest in getting married, despite numbers normalising from a significant slump experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Divorces, meanwhile, also saw a post-Covid rebound, but at a much faster rate than the newlyweds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to recently released data<\/a> from StatsSA, South Africa recorded a nearly 5% annual increase in the number of registered marriages and unions for 2022, versus an 11% climb in divorces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest numbers continue to show a steady decline in the marriages over the last decade, as divorce rates remained relatively high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making vows<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were a total of 111,784 civil marriages, 4,376 customary marriages, and 2,461 civil unions registered in 2022. This represents 5%, 63.5% and 9.9% increases from 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The median ages of bridegrooms and brides for civil marriages were 38 and 34 years, respectively, while customary marriages were 35 and 29 years old. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at civil unions, the median age for “spouses-1 and spouses-2” were 35 years and 33 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over a quarter of the civil marriages were registered in Gauteng, and around 80.2% of the grooms and 85.4% of the brides tied the knot for the first time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 30% of the registered customary marriages were from Limpopo, followed by KwaZulu-Natal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Generally, the warmer months (beginning from September and peaking in December) are the most popular months for solemnising marriages in South Africa,” said Stats SA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Statistics show that fewer South Africans and permanent residents are choosing to make their way down the aisle, although numbers have been rebounding somewhat since Covid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The number of registered marriages consistently declined in the ten-year period (2013 to 2022) except for a slight increase of 0.6% between 2015 and 2016 and an increase of 5% between 2021 and 2022,” said the government stats agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Breaking vows<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2022 saw a significant 10.9% increase in divorce forms being processed, sitting at 20,196 for the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This marks an estimated 33 divorces per 100,000 resident population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Results also showed that four in ten divorces were from marriages that lasted for less than 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to StatsSA, the crude divorce rates shows that “the white population group had the highest rate of 84 per 100,000 estimated resident population.”<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Source: StatsSA<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Additionally, more women (55.8%) filed for divorce than men (33.2%). In 5.5% of the cases, the plaintiff’s sex was not identified, while 5.4% of divorce proceedings were initiated by both parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The provincial distribution indicates that Gauteng, the Western Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal were the provinces with the highest number of divorces granted, contributing 61.6% of all divorces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 80% of divorces for men and women were from first-time marriages. This is compared to 9% of men and 7.7% of women from second-time marriages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less than 2% of men and women were getting divorced for at least the third time.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Read: Huge changes for South African divorces in the works<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stats SA has published the latest data on registered marriages and divorces in the country, showing that South African’s aren’t that committed to vows – whether making or breaking them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":676621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[10761,10759,5769,19581],"class_list":["post-760351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-divorce","tag-marriage","tag-statssa","tag-wedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760351"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":760471,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760351\/revisions\/760471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}