1957 - United Nations Statistics Division

Limitations: Because marriage, unlike birth or death, is a
legal act rather than a biological fact, the problem of
comparability takes on a somewhat different aspect in
relation to these data. This is especially so in relation to
"completeness".
This table, like all corresponding trend tables, includes
a quality-of-data code which appears as "C" or "U" in
the first column of the table. The elements of the code
and its implications have been described on p. 24 and
above. However, the concept of "completeness" is difficult
to define in the case of marriages because, in most countries
of the world, the act of legalizing the union is at the
same time the legal "registration" of the union. In
countries where the act of registering a marriage in the
civil register is a separate and distinct function from the
performance of the marriage ceremony, there may be a
discrepancy between the number of marriages actually
performed and the number which are registered. 54
The existence or non-existence of a time interval between
the performance of a marriage and its registration
is pertinent also to the understanding of the implications
of the symbol (t) used in Table 22, as it is in other tables,
to indicate that statistics were tabulated on a date-ofregistration
basis rather than by date of occurrence. As
was pointed out previously, the qualification is most
meaningful in relation to live births; nonetheless, this
factor, together with information on the type of data
included, should be kept in mind in using marriage statistics
from Table 22.
Variation is introduced also by the composition of
marriage statistics within the framework of each country's
legal definition of marriage. Some countries compile
statistics only for civil marriages, although religious marriages
may also be legally recognized; in other countries,
the only records available are church registers and the
statistics, therefore, relate to religious marriages only. In
one or two countries, statistics relate to the marriage
licenses issued, that is, to the documents granted by the
State, certifying to the fact that the prerequisites for legal
marriage, i.e., age, consent, health, and so forth, have
been met. The number of marriage licenses issued necessarily
overstates the number of marriages performed,
since such licenses are declarations of intent not followed
in all cases by a marriage ceremony. In the absence of
statistics of marriages performed, however, they do give
a fair approximation of the actual number of marriages
which occurred.
By virtue of their nature, marriage statistics exclude
consensual unions, except as special measures for legalizing
them may bring them into the category of legal
marriages. In some countries, such unions are as frequent
as formal marriages and are accepted as marriages in the
local mores. For these countries marriage statistics based
on registered ceremonies are misleading as indicators of
the actual rate of family formation.
Finally, crude marriage rates, like crude birth and
death rates, are of only limited value for analytical purposes.
Marriages are more appropriately related to the
"marriageable" population, i.e., widowed and divorced
persons and single persons who have reached the age of
consent. However, crude rates do measure changes and
differences in the frequency of marriage in a total popu-
54 For details of the registration process in various countries, see the
Handbook of Vital Statistics Methods, op. cit.
39
lation, and fluctuations in the rate are often found to
reflect changes in economic and social conditions.
Table 23
5. Divorce statistics
Statistics of divorce are shown in only one table in this
Yearbook, namely in Table 23. For this reason, the explanatory
notes for divorce statistics will be given in
connexion with this table, rather than as a separate
section.
Table 23 presents the number of divorces, together
with the crude annual divorce rates for each year 1948­
1956.
The definition of a divorce used in this table is that
recommended by the United Nations in Principles for a
Vital Statistics System 55 and reads as follows:
Divorce is a final legal dissolution of a marriage, that
is, the separation of husband and wife by a judicial
decree which confers on the parties the right to civil
and/or religious remarriage, according to the laws of
each country.
This definition automatically excludes "legal separations"
and "annulments."
These final decrees may be granted by religious or civil
courts according to the law in each country; they may be
registered either by the courts alone or by the courts and
the civil registrar; and statistics may be based on court
records or on statistical reports of divorce. These factors
have no real bearing on the nature of the data, although
the type and character of the statistics are noted in the
tables when specified in the source.
In so far as possible, divorce statistics refer to final
divorce decrees registered in the present-in-area population
of the geographic unit specified. Divorces among
tribal or indigenous groups isolated from the dominant
culture are invariably excluded from the data, because
they are not granted by the usual court procedures nor
do they come within the jurisdiction of the registration
system.
Coverage: Unless otherwise noted, statistics in Table 23
relate to the present-in-area popUlation of 110 geographic
areas. This coverage, while relatively extensive for divorce
statistics, is still somewhat below the potential coverage
due to several factors. As in similar time-trend tables
presented in this Yearbook, coverage was limited by the
fact that for some areas, the incidence of divorce was too
small to provide an adequate base for a rate. In this
table also, the coverage for Africa is extremely limited,
principally because of the nature of the data.
Rate computation: Crude divorce rates are the number of
final divorce decrees reported in the time period per 1,000
persons in the midyear or other annual estimate of population.
In general, the popUlations on which the crude
rates are computed are those official estimates or censuses
presented in Table 3. Reference to this table will provide
information on the character of the denominator of the
rates in respect of its type and coverage and also as to
its revised or unrevised nature.
It will be seen from the footnotes to the table that strict
correspondence between the numerator and the denominator
was not always possible. For example, divorces
reported among selected communities are sometimes re-
550p. cit. Principle 202.