45,059 marriages have been contracted in 2018, i.e. a slight increase of 1.7 % compared to the previous year. With 38,921 new declarations, legal cohabitations are rather stable (-0.3 % compared to 2017).
Divorces remain stable: 23,135 in 2018, i.e. +0.3 % compared to 2017. It is also the case of widowhoods (+0.2 % compared to the values of 2017). However, terminations of legal cohabitations are on the rise (+4.4 %).
- The marriage duration at divorce or widowhood does not change much: 15 and 48.4 years of living together, respectively.
- There is a slight increase in the average duration of cohabitation: from 4.3 years in 2017 to 4.6 years the following year.
- Marriage remains the first cause of legal cohabitation termination.
- The summer months are once again the most popular to get married: 53.9 % of marriages are contracted in those months. On the other hand, there is no seasonal effect for legal cohabitation.
- There are still more widows than widowers.
Flanders is the driving force behind the slight increase in marriages in our country. Indeed, this region registers the greatest increase of this type of partnership (+2.1 % compared to 2017). In the other two regions, the trend is towards stability: +0.4 % in Wallonia and -0.6 % in the Brussels-Capital Region.
The number of divorces has barely changed. However, legal cohabitation terminations are on the rise: +4.4 % compared to 2017.
Most couples are formed around the age of 30
In 2018, it is still around the age of thirty that single partners enter into legal cohabitation for the first time, on average at 31.4 years for the first cohabitant and 29.4 years for the second. Single people tend to marry a little later, at 33 years for the first spouse and at 30.7 years for the second. In both cases, the age difference in the couple does not vary from year to year: 2 years for cohabitants and 2.4 years for spouses.
Increasing or decreasing phenomenon?
If we relate the events to the "cohort" of marriages from which they originate, we observe that the divorce rate[1] remains stable: less than one marriage out of two ends in divorce. As for widowhood, there is no substantial change since a little more than one marriage out of two ends with the death of one spouse.
Related Figures
[1] The total divorce rate or sum of duration-specific divorces indicates the number of divorces in a fictitious group of 1,000 marriages if, for each marriage duration, we observe the same divorce rates than those recorded in the year concerned.