rates, lone parents, and people's reluctance to marry or to have children have increased. However, with regards to family formation and long term cohabitation instead of marriage, there are very strong differences between the regions of former West Germany and East Germany (which was formally Communist). Significantly more children are born out of wedlock in eastern Germany than in western Germany. In 2012, in eastern Germany 61.6% of births were to unmarried women, while in western Germany only 28.4% were. A longitudinal survey found that union stability was significantly higher for cohabiting mothers in eastern Germany than western Germany, due to differences in German society. Greece In Greece, family dynamics remain conservative. The principal form of partnership is marriage, and extramarital childbearing and long term cohabitation are not widespread. For instance, in 2016 only 9.4% of births were outside marriage, which is the lowest percentage among the European Union member states. Religion in Greece plays a very important role in society; it was only in 1983 that civil marriage was introduced in the country. The new laws modernized family law, abolished dowry, and provided for equal rights for "illegitimate" children. According to a 2008 study: "Greek society still remains conservative and birthing outside marriage, although protected by law, remains in many ways socially unacceptable." Despite this, there have been further legal changes providing for a modern "western" outlook on family life, including Law 3719/2008 dealing with family issues, including Article 14 of the law, which reduced the separation period (necessary before a divorce in certain circumstances) from four years to two years. Hungary The literature on second demographic transition argues as well that highly educated women are more prone to engage in cohabitation, although the reasons are different: they are less concerned with respecting the societal norms. Some scholars argued that cohabitation is very similar to being single in the sense of not giving up independence and personal autonomy. In Hungary, cohabitation was an uncommon phenomenon until the late 1980s and it was largely confined to the divorced or widowed individuals. Among the ethnic groups, Gypsy/Roma tended to have higher rates of cohabitation, mainly due to their reluctance to register their marriages officially. Since the 1980s, cohabitation became much more frequent among all ethnic groups and it has been argued to have strongly influenced the decline in fertility. As of 2015, 47.9% of births were to unmarried women. Ireland Cohabitation