ABSTRACT
Great interest in the study of marriages in Latvia was aroused when Latvia recorded the highest divorce rate in the USSR, and one of the highest divorce rates in the world in the early 1960s. In 1979 the divorce rate peaked at 5.5 divorces per 1,000 inhabitants, in the following years it remained level at 4.7 to 4.8, and only started to decline in 1985. In 1989 it was 4.2. The divorce rate in Latvia is higher than in most European countries: France, 1.9 (1987); Federal Republic of Germany, 2.1 (1988); Belgium, 2.0 (1987).
