Bridging The Marriage Gap
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday October 4, 2004
A successful marriage, said Ogden Nash, was one of incompatibility. He has income; she is pattable. As advice, it is less and less pertinent. Marriage rates have slowed since the 1950s and '60s when the norm was to wed in one's early 20s, and the rise in de facto relationships is not within cooee of compensating. In 1971 a quarter of men and an eighth of women aged 25 to 29 had not married. Today, it is about 70 per cent of men and 55 per cent of women.
Between the censuses of 1986 and 2001, the proportion of 25- to 29-year-olds without live-in partners jumped from 47 per cent to 59 per cent of men and from 33 per cent to 47 per cent of women. Partnership rates also fell for those in their 30s and 40s. How is this so when new research indicates Australia's young strongly favour marriage and, as 17- and 18-year-olds, are keen to wed by their late 20s?The issue is not whether marriage retains popularity as an aspiration but whether women, in particular, see it as the necessity their grandmothers did.National consequences of the low marriage rate, and its related low birth rate, are significant. Australia's population will steeply age over the next few decades. We are living longer and our birthrate is falling - from 3.6 children a woman in pre-pill 1961 to just 1.7 now. The challenge of fewer people of robust working age having to support a burgeoning elderly class is obvious. As the federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, said last February: "By its nature, demographic change arrives slowly, but its effects are profound. Demography is destiny." From age 27, the "fertility window" of women diminishes by 5 percentage points a year, cutting the chances of natural conception at, say, age 35 by 40 per cent.So why the discrepancy between youthful ambition to marry and the realisation rate? Research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies makes some useful stabs at an explanation. In particular, it cites as impediments two influences: spouse-seekers today are often too fussy or too wary. The former seems a likely consequence of women's economic independence. Marriage no longer is a woman's sole ticket to economic security or prosperity. Along with a poor understanding of the impact of age on fertility, that makes marriage less urgent. The latter influence - wariness - most likely reflects the increased instability of marriage, the expanded divorce rate, that young adults see around them.For all the enthusiasm for tax policy and other mechanisms to make marriage and reproduction more attractive, these strategies have a poor modern track record because other factors run counter to financial inducement. Some, identified by this latest research, demonstrate the intractability of the non-marrying trend and the impotence of government in reversing it. Government is many things to many people, but a matchmaker it is not.
© 2004 Sydney Morning Herald
