MARRIAGE STATISTICS. III/2020

The number of marriages dropped by 43.3% in the third quarter of 2020

In August marriages were down 51.9%

In the third quarter of 2020 the figure for marriages in the Basque Country stood at 1,474, which was a drop of 43.3% compared to the same quarter of the previous year, according to Eustat data.

Due to the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 crisis and, potentially, by other factors, there was a sharp drop in weddings over the summer months: 43.7% in July, 51.9% in August and 39.9% in September.

The number of marriages decreased in all three provinces, given that in Álava there were 196 weddings (-49.1%), in Gipuzkoa 482 (-46.4%) and in Bizkaia 701 (-40.9%). On the other hand, 95 couples fixed their residency outside the Basque Country.

Of the total number of marriages, 47 were between people of the same sex (32 between women and 15 between men) and the remaining 1,427 were heterosexual marriages.

During the third quarter of 2020, 9 out of 10 weddings were civil, 90.4%. The percentage of civil weddings was 8.1 points higher than in the same period of 2019.

Of the 1,474 marriages in the third quarter of 2020, 1,390 men and 1,423 women resident in the Basque Country got married. For 1,130 spouses (81.3%) this was their first marriage, whilst 15 widowers and 245 divorcees remarried. The percentage of first weddings for women was similar to that for men: the number of single women who married stood at 1,184 (83.2%), 12 widows and 227 divorcees.

The percentage of foreign nationals entering into marriage increased

With respect to the distribution according to the age of the couple, 93% of husbands and 84.5% of wives were older than 30. In the same period of 2019, this percentage was 89.2% for men and 80% for women; the increase was therefore 3.8 and 4.5 points, respectively.

In the third quarter of 2020, 10% of recently married men and 14.4% of recently married women were foreign nationals. With regards to the same quarter of the previous year, the percentage of men increased by 1.7 percentage points and that of women 1.8.

For further information:

Eustat - Euskal Estatistika Erakundea / Basque Statistics Institute C/ Donostia-San Sebastián, 1 01010 Vitoria-Gasteiz Press service: servicioprensa@eustat.es Tel: 945 01 75 62

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