Monday, May 17, 2004
Ring out them bells!
There’s some good news on the marriage front. Statistics NZ says 2003 saw the greatest number of marriages since 1991, 21,420. That was 3-and-a-half percent more than the previous year. The marriage rate has stayed stable for several years now – 14 out of every 1,000 eligible not-marrieds.
While it’s encouraging that marriage is still fashionable (according to the 2001 Census, for every hundred people in a relationship, 80 were married), we have still fallen a long way since the peak marrying year of 1971, when 45 out of every 1,000 eligibles rushed to the altar.
Balanced against this, however, are some sobering figures which show that between June 2001 and June 2003, sole parent families with dependent children outgrew two-parent families, not only in percentage terms but in absolute numbers.
Lindsay Mitchell, a petitioner for a review of the DPB, says according to the New Zealand Income Survey, produced by Statistics NZ, single parent families grew by 12,600 or nine percent. Two-parent families grew by only 11,000 or three percent.
"This trend is very bad news,� says Mitchell. “When marriages fail or parents reject each other it is a cost to all of society. Children from one parent families are more likely to live in poverty or be on welfare. They are more likely to exhibit negative outcomes."
There’s some good news on the marriage front. Statistics NZ says 2003 saw the greatest number of marriages since 1991, 21,420. That was 3-and-a-half percent more than the previous year. The marriage rate has stayed stable for several years now – 14 out of every 1,000 eligible not-marrieds.
While it’s encouraging that marriage is still fashionable (according to the 2001 Census, for every hundred people in a relationship, 80 were married), we have still fallen a long way since the peak marrying year of 1971, when 45 out of every 1,000 eligibles rushed to the altar.
Balanced against this, however, are some sobering figures which show that between June 2001 and June 2003, sole parent families with dependent children outgrew two-parent families, not only in percentage terms but in absolute numbers.
Lindsay Mitchell, a petitioner for a review of the DPB, says according to the New Zealand Income Survey, produced by Statistics NZ, single parent families grew by 12,600 or nine percent. Two-parent families grew by only 11,000 or three percent.
"This trend is very bad news,� says Mitchell. “When marriages fail or parents reject each other it is a cost to all of society. Children from one parent families are more likely to live in poverty or be on welfare. They are more likely to exhibit negative outcomes."
