38% first marriages may end in divorce

The probability that a woman’s first marriage ends in divorce was 38 per cent in 2019, which is one percentage point higher than in 2018, according to the Statistics Finland.

However, the figure for 2019 was on level with that for 2005 to 2017, when it varied between 38 and 40 per cent.

An interesting fact is that a first marriage ending in widowhood is slightly more probable than the marriage ending in divorce.

The above-mentioned probabilities are based on the events of one year of opposite-sex married couples based on which the probability that an event takes place is calculated.

However, in recent years there has been some indication that the divorce rate during the early years of marriage might be decreasing slightly.

The risk of divorce grows steeply during the first years of marriage.

The risk has been at its highest in the third or fourth year when the divorce rate in different years of marriage has been examined starting from 1990.

After the peak time for divorcing is reached, the risk of divorce decreases very similarly in all marriage cohorts.

Meanwhile, the divorce rate of same-sex couples has been decreasing continuously since 2015. In the last few years, the divorce rate has decreased more steeply than before. By contrast, the divorce rate of opposite sexes has remained almost unchanged.

In 2019, the change in the divorce rate was small for couples of opposite sexes compared with the previous year, unlike for same-sex couples. The divorce rate of same-sex couples decreased by 10 per cent, two percentage points more than in the year before.

The divorce rate of same-sex couples was 18 per one thousand couples, in the year before it was 20. The corresponding divorce rate for opposite-sex couples remained unchanged at 13 per one thousand couples.

There has been a clear difference in the divorce rates of male and female couples as female couples’ divorces have been clearly more common than those of male couples since 2004. In 2019, the divorce rate of both female and male couples decreased, but the divorce rate of female couples much more than that of male couples. For this reason, the divorce rate of same-sex couples decreased much more strongly than in the previous year.