2,700 same-sex couples in country

There were 2,700 families of registered same-sex couples in the country at the end of 2016 and the number of people living alone was 1,131,000, marking a rise of 19,100 from that in the previous year.There were 1,476,000 families in Finland at the end of 2016, according to Statistics Finland.

Although the number of families has been growing all the time, the annual growth in the number has diminished considerably since 2013.

From 2004 to 2013, the number of families grew by an average of 5,500 families per year. In 2016, the number of families went up by just 200.

The number of families with a married couple and children continues to fall.

Sixty-four per cent of all families were families of married couples. The number of families with a married couple and children has fallen by 6,200 from the previous year and that of cohabiting couples without any common children by 200.

The numbers of other family types have, however, grown that much that the number of all families grew slightly.

Twenty-three per cent were still families of cohabiting couples and 12 per cent were one-parent families as in the previous year.