ABSTRACT
Introduction Recent statistics show that just under 88% of all couples in Australia are married to each other, with just over 12% living in de facto relationships. Generally, the marriage rate trend is in long-term decline. In 1988, there were 116,800 marriages registered in Australia. Ten years later, despite a slight increase in 1998 over the previous year, the figure was down to 110,600. The marriage rate had peaked in 1942 at 12 marriages per 1,000 population. In 2002, there were 105,400 marriages.
