Introduction

For the second part of the book, B. Jane Elliott has produced an enormously useful summary of key demographic trends in the years 1945-87 and has succeeded in bringing together a number of previously uncombined data sets. This chapter serves as a valuable resource in making sense of the key themes explored in detail in parts I and III. The author begins by setting out major changes in patterns of marriage over the period. She shows how from the 1940s an equalisation of the sex ratio created the conditions in which a higher proportion of men and women in the population would get married. This was accompanied up to the end of the 1960s by a trend towards earlier marriage. However, from 1970 age at marriage began to increase and was associated with a drop in rates of marriage. It remains unclear to what extent falling marriage rates and rising levels of cohabitation represent a movement away from the institution of marriage. Divorce, however, clearly increased over the period, particularly between 1960 and 1980, though divorce rates remained fairly constant during the 1980s. Divorce rates also varied considerably in different parts of the United Kingdom and in England and Wales a clear association between divorce and social class was demonstrated. Between 1950 and 1987 the proportion of all marriages taking place which were remarriages for one or other partner increased from 20 per cent to 36 per cent. This was entirely the result of increasing numbers of divorced men and women marrying again.