ABSTRACT
The dramatic changes in the status of marriage and the family over the past few decades have been strongly supported by statistics in Hong Kong. According to the latest data issued by the Census and Statistics Department of the Hong Kong government, the number of never-married women and men increased by 64.2% and 17.1%, respectively, from 1986 to 2012. The median age at first marriage for both men and women is also significantly higher: in 2012, it was 29.0 and 31.1 for women and men, respectively, compared to 23.9 and 27.0 in 1981. The number of divorces has soared from 2,062 in 1981 to 21,125 in 2012. There has also been a steady growth in single-parent families and one-person households.
