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This is an old version of this article. The newest version may be found HERE.
One argument often used against giving marriage equality contends that in jurisdictions where gays and lesbians have achieved as much marriage or the family has crumbled. Though official same-sex relationships have existed throughout history, it is not easy finding enough contemporary data on such a recent occurrence to be making bold statements, and that’s really is the point. Nevertheless, as you'll see, what data there is paints a different picture than that stated by anti-gay activists.
Contents:
- Marriage and Divorce by Country - The effects of same-sex marriages where they've been allowed.
- Figure - Yearly Marriages From 1900 to 2007.
- Figure - Yearly Divorces From 1900 to 2007.
- Figure - Yearly Marriages Per Divorce.
- The Netherlands - Not a lot of data but it must be addressed.
- Figure -Yearly Marriages, Divorces and Economic Data From the Netherlands.
- Out of Wedlock Births - How does same-sex marriage relate to children being born out of wedlock?
- Figure - Demographic Research on the Family Formations Experienced by Children in Various Countries.
- Birth Rate - Does same-sex marriage stop the storks from delivery?
- World Conclusions - Are these countries really doing all that bad?
- Marriage and Divorce by US States - The effect of same-sex marriage, where they've been allowed in the US.
- Figure - Marriage and Divorce Rates For US States.
- Conclusions
- References
Marriage and Divorce by Country:
Firstly, on this page you'll find collected the marriage and divorce statistics from some of the countries that have, for a significant amount of time, established some sort of official union for same-sex couples, giving legal marriage, or marriage rights.
Figure 1 shows the marriages per year per person in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, from 1900 to 2006
(1, 2, 3). Filled circles are shown at the year of implementation of rights for gay couples in each country.
As can be seen, as the countries modernized, making marriage less of an economic tool for getting along in life and allowing women more say, marriage does decrease on a slight downward trend. In every case, though, once gay unions have been sanctioned, the number of marriages have generally gone up each year, not down (Note also, gay unions are not counted in these numbers; these are heterosexual marriages only).
Of special interest is Sweden (red line). A couple years ago it was not rare for anti-gay rights activists to point to Sweden as an example of how gays threaten heterosexual marriage. The data they were using were from the years just before rights were given to a couple years after, only that negative slope right where gay unions are officially implemented. Of course what was not mentioned was that Sweden, for a change in pension law, had a surge of marriages in 1989 in order to act before a 1990 deadline; the peak is apparent in Figure 1. This surge should cause a drop in marriage rate in subsequent years, due to a drain of marriage eligible couples, and it does for a while. Nevertheless, even after that, marriages began going up again after same sex couples received equal rights and now, ignoring that blip, they are the highest they've been in almost three decades.
The next graph shows divorces per year per person for the same countries in the same time span.
Again, with modernity and increased freedom, divorces go up, as people, particularly women, need less and less to depend on their marriage for a livelihood, and unhappy marriages can more easily split up. That trend, which some attempt to blame on gay marriage, is there long before any rights were given. Not only that, but after the rights are given the divorce rate, in all cases, went down.
For comparison, the United States, a country that has a majority of states with laws disallowing gay unions, does have a higher rate of marriage than these countries, but it also has a higher rate of divorce than all the scandinavian countries, by the most recent data for all, 2005. Respect for marriage is not, of course, shown in the rate of marriages if they are being dissolved faster than anyone else. The marriage rates should go up and divorce shouldn't, and that's what's seen in these countries with equal rights for gay unions (Figure 3).
Furthermore, the marriages that are created in these countries are more stable. In demographic research conducted by the Max-Plank institute, it was found that the countries which now give marriage equality have longer lasting marriages. Though the US has a higher marriage rate, given 15 years, 42% of them will fail, while in countries that allow marriage equality, there is significantly fewer dissolutions of the fewer marriages created: 28% for Sweden, 22% for Norway, 8% for Spain will separate within 15 years (4).
At pointing out these positive trends, some opponents have said that the trends do not matter. They then say it is the actual magnitude of the marriage rate that shows respect for marriage, and low respect leads to gay marriage (and yet they may still call their symptom a cause they hope to cure in other cases).
While it is true primarily conservative countries (e.g. Iran) have the highest marriage rates and lowest divorce rates, and true they most often do not allow gays to marry (or, in some instances, even live), in general, the authoritarian culture needed to keep people in unhappy marriages is not to be aspire towards. Even still, looking at the countries with the highest marriage rates (5), South Africa is ranked seventh in the world, beating out Iran, #10. South Africa is one of the more recent countries to give full marriage equality to gay and lesbian couples.
The Netherlands
Same-sex marriage rights were given in the Netherlands in 1998 and full marriage was given in 2001. The statistics for the Netherlands were not included in the analysis above as it was decided at least a decade of data was needed, and even that span is lacking in its ability to get beyond the noise. Nevertheless, the Netherlands are still used by some unscrupulous activists as an example of the hypothesized negative effects of marriage equality and it should be discussed.
Figure 4 shows the marriage and divorce data for the Netherlands, along with some economic data (6).
It is evident, since the implementation of marriage equality, marriage rates have gone down in the Netherlands. Even ignoring the fact that this is only one county among those in the region with such rights (those discussed above), there are clear reasons for this drop that have nothing to do with same-sex marriage.
First consider that, again, there is a general trend present that has been going on long before gay couples were even considered officially sane in the Netherlands. How can a person pick an event in the midst of a downward trend and somehow try to pose that event as the cause of the trend? It would be wrong to do so. One may as well claim the decline was caused by the Y2K Bug. Secondly, divorces have gone down since these rights were given, and still remain at about 33% of marriages ending in divorce, whereas the same rate in the US is about 50% (6).
More importantly, Statistics Netherlands, their official governmental organization for demographic research, has a clear idea of why that drop after the year 2000 occurred (7) . The marriage rate follows people's sense of economic security. Men, for example, will be less likely to marry their girlfriends if they are in fear they will be unable to support a family, and that is exactly what the data shows. There was an economic decline in the Netherlands just after these rights were given, and, as it did in past economic cycles, the marriage rate followed. In the most recent data the economy had improved and 2006 saw an increase in marriage rates in the Netherlands. The lesson is simple: if you want to promote marriage, oppose poverty, not marriage.
Out of Wedlock Births
A follow up criticism of marriage equality often states that, where same sex couples have equal rights, straight couples have already or will soon stop seeing marriage as an institution for the raising of children. The implication being a person's marriage isn't useful to people or jurisdictions, unless it results in offspring. This assumption is addressed elsewhere (Related isocrat.org article).
Here, firstly, this argument does often ignore the stark fact that anti-gay rights activists are working hard to keep many children's parents from legal marriage and the associated benefits and security for their homes. To advocate legal irresponsibility for families, simply because those raising the children are of too similar sexual anatomy, betrays the hope to promote marriage in homes raising children. Same-sex couples are, simply, parents too, and if legally married parents are good for other children they are good for their children as well.
Evidence for the claim that same-sex marriage devalues marriage for those raising children is often given in the form of statistics on out-of-wedlock births. It is true that Scandinavian countries have a high rate of births outside of wedlock; some jurisdiction have over 50% of a couple's first child being born outside marriage. Such statistics, though, are very poor measurements of the sort of environment children actually experience. For instance, nearly 70% of these cohabitants will legally marry after the birth of their first child (8). In a way, these scandinavian countries are doing exactly what anti-gay rights activists hope and are specifically using marriage as a place for child rearing, not for childless couples. Scandinavian couples likely do this as they are able to receive many of the social and financial benefits of marriage, when without children, without marriage under their more socialist politics.
Of course, what matters to children is that they have a good, stable home, not whether or not their parents have registered their love with the government. Consider the demographic research conducted by Andersson, from data primarily representing the late 80's to the early 90's, around the implementation of marriage equality in some of these countries (9). Figure 4 shows data for the US and a number of other countries currently giving equal rights to same-sex couple (Denmark and the Netherlands were not included in this research).
Figure 5.
Demographic Research on the Family Formations Experienced by Children in Various Countries
(9).Figure 5a shows that, while more children in, for instance, Sweden are born out of wedlock than in the US, more children in these countries with marriage equality were born to couples, married or not, instead of single mothers. Furthermore, these children had a significantly lower risk of experiencing their childhood outside of an intact family, married parents or not (Figure 5b), and spent more of their life with both of their parents in the same home than the children of the United States (Figure 5c). For US anti-gay rights activists to insult the family values of these countries that have promoted marriage and equality for all couples is substantially off base.
Birth Rate
Sometimes the charge is leveled that these countries are being "driven to extinction" for their hypothesized low view of marriage and family. It is true that they do have low birth rates. Figure 6 shows the UN data on the 2005 reproduction rate in some of the countries discussed
along with the averages from countries in various stages of development (10).
While the Scandinavian countries do have about a 10% lower reproduction rate than the US, this has nothing to do with gay marriage. Consider that South Africa, a country with equal rights for same-sex couples has a reproduction rate 16% greater than the US. The actuality is that reproduction rate hinges on economic development and access to and understanding of birth control. People want to be parents, but the average person does not want to be the parent of a lot of children. They would rather focus on what they have, if given the choice. None of this has a thing to do with gay rights, except for the fact that the education, well being, and respect for individual freedoms that lead to couples deciding for themselves how many children they want also contributes to advances in gay rights. X causes A and B, but B is not causing A.
Figure 7 - Population divided by maximum recorded population. Filled circles indicate when rights for same-sex couples were implemented.This fact may easily be seen in comparing the developed countries to the developing countries of the world (Figure 6). With more education and development the birth rate drops. Furthermore, on average, these countries that allow same-sex couples equal legal rights are found in the data to be better educated (11) and produce more per capita than the US (12). Of course that data best explains their low birth rate, not a couple thousand same-sex unions per year, many of which are raising children. These scandinavian countries do, in fact, have a higher reproduction rate than the average of the developed world.
Furthermore, there is no risk in sight of these countries even decreasing in their populations, let alone extinction. Figure 7 shows the population of these countries as a percentage of their maximum recorded population (which is their most recent population figure, for all). The populations have been going up for nearly all of recorded history and the slope of the rise is not apparently affected by same-sex marriage rights. In fact, the rate of change for all these countries is positive, and has even increased for 3 out of the 4 countries represented there since implementation of same-sex marriage. Claims of extinction are greatly exaggerated, if not hysterical.
World Conclusions
The United States is certainly a magnificent country, one with some of the greatest moral promises to be found in the world. Nevertheless, the data is out there. All these scandinavian countries giving marriage equality are, when compared to the US, better educated
(11). On average, they live longer
(13),
have happier lives
(14), and produce more per capita
(12). In the realm of family, they have far fewer teenage pregnancies per capita
(15), their children spend more time with both of their parents
(9), and their marriages are stronger
(4). It is unreasonable and simply wrong for anti-gay activists in the US to point fingers at these countries and malign their values, family values or otherwise. We should not be trying to tear them down and misrepresent where they have had success.
It is true these countries are different in their politics and their family structures from the US. It is also true their success in some areas has caused them to seemingly reach a point of leveling off their population. Every well-off free nation (including the US) will have to figure out how to live without continually adding more and more people to its cities and towns, to the 6.6 billion of us already here, but that is an issue of economics, not gay marriage.
One area, though, where we are similar to these countries, where these other countries have met one of those great moral promises of the US even before we have, is in their equal treatment of their citizens. They have not been harmed by treating families, their couples and their children, with equality regardless of the sexes involved, and neither will the US.
Marriage and Divorce by US States:
Similar to the data on marriage involving various countries, the following shows the United States split into groups based on how they treat same sex unions (with DC and Puerto Rico also included). It is too soon to look at trends in the US, but we can look at the current status:
Figure 8 shows marriage rates in blue and divorce rates in red, all per capita and all an average of the most recent data we could find, 2003 to 2005
(16). The groups are: 1. The average of all US states, 2. The average of those with laws and constitutional amendments against equal rights for gay couples, 3. Those with only anti-gay rights laws, no amendments, 4. Those offering civil unions, and 5. Those with full state marriage rights (Massachusetts). Note that some may define gay couples away from marriage, and yet still offer some civil union recognition, and some states have not acted in this area.
As can be seen, states that have legally acted against marriage for same sex couples do have a slightly greater marriage rate than average. Nevertheless, those with some sort of civil union for gay couples have a significantly higher marriage rate.
While Massachusetts is at the low end of US marriage rates, it must be remembered that respect for the institution is not shown in marrying often and divorcing often. Massachusetts is #2 in the nation in its low divorce rate and has been for most of this decade. On the other hand, states with a higher than average divorce rate per citizen include some of the most conservative, those with anti-marriage equality legislation (Utah, Idaho, Florida, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, and so on).
In fact, if you subtract the divorce rate from the marriage rate (the distance from the red to the blue bars), Massachusetts has the same score as the average of all the states. Furthermore, when all the states that have at least some sort of legal rights for gay unions are averaged together, they have the highest score by far, 32% higher than the anti-marriage equality states. States that recognize same-sex unions have more marriages and more marriages that succeed, and yet the "pro-family" side of this debate will look down on their policies.
Conclusion:
What to make of such numbers? It really is too soon to tell, but many do claim great confidence in their theories that rights for families headed by same sex couples will mean ruin for marriage. They sometimes claim to have evidence in the very same data presented on this page, but it falls flat. It is clear the dire predictions that people will not want marriage if gay couples have it are not seen in the data; neither is the theory that governments only give same sex couples marriage equality if the people do not respect marriage and family. If anything, it is the opposite.
Still, might same-sex marriage help the institution of marriage? Sure, it promotes marriage by definition; it also gives more people a stake in marriage as an institution. Promoting legally committed and interdependent unions as recognizably beneficial for families and governments, regardless of the involved anatomies, elevates marriage in general. Furthermore, the public discussions regarding why marriage is important to gay couples and their children probably are the impetus for some of the same discussions in heterosexual couples who may have mistaken marriage as irrelevant to their place in modern society. Nevertheless, we should not be so bold as to make the same errors as our opponents, and say official gay unions are shown here to strengthen the institution of family. What influences marriage and divorce rates is a complex set of causes and not much is clear in any of these numbers, save for the fact that there is no evidence here to show, as many have attempted, that same sex marriage harms the unions of others.
REFERENCES ::
1. Statistics Sweden. Statistics Sweden. http://www.scb.se/.
2. Statistics Denmark. Statistics Denmark. http://www.dst.dk/homeuk.aspx.
3. Statistics Norway. Statistics Norway. http://www.ssb.no/english/.
4. Andersson, G.. Dissolution of Unions in Europe: A Comparative Overview. Max-Plank Institute for Demographic Research, pp. 1-17, (2003).
5. Mapsofworld.com. Top 10 Countries With the Highest Marriage Rate. http://mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/countries-by-highest-marriage-rates.html. (2006).
6. Statistics Netherlands. Statistics Netherlands. http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/.
7. Statistics Netherlands. Economic revival pushes up marriage rate. http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/bevolking/publicaties/artikelen/archief/2007/2007-2130-wm.htm. (2008).
8. M.V. Lee Badgett. Did gay marriage destroy heterosexual marriage in Scandinavia?. http://www.slate.com/id/2100884/. (2004).
9. Andersson, G.. Children'S Experience of Family Disruption and Family Formation: Evidence from 16 Ffs Countries. Demographic Research. vol. 7, pp. 344, (2002).
10. UN. World Population Prospects. http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=2. (2008).
11. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Learning for Tomorrow’s World., pp. None, (2003).
12. Students of the World. Gross National Product (GNP) per capita. http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/infopays/rank/PNBH2.html. (2005).
13. CIA. Life expectancy at birth. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2102.html.
14. Veenhoven, R.. Advances in understanding happiness., pp. None, (1997).
15. Nation Master. Teenage pregnancy (per capita) by country. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_tee_pre_percap-health-teenage-pregnancy-per-capita.
16. US Federal Goverment. FedStats. http://www.fedstats.gov/.