Title: Average age for women to marry hits 30 for first time
Headings: Average age for women to marry hits 30 for first time
Average age for women to marry hits 30 for first time
Content: The average age at which women and men get married has been getting consistently later in recent years. The mean year for first marriages for women in 1991 was 25.5 and just 23.1 back in 1981, the year of the last major Royal wedding. Lady Diana Spencer, as she was then, had just turned 20 when she married Prince of Wales. Catherine Middleton, in contrast is 29 years old, suggesting that the forthcoming Royal Wedding is – despite its pomp – more reflective of British social trends than some admit. The average age of men has climbed from 25.4 in 1981, to 32.1 years in 2009. The figures also confirmed the long-running decline in the institution of marriage, with the number of marriages hitting a fresh all-time low, with fewer people being married in 2009 than in any year since figures started to be recorded in 1895. There were 231,490 marriages in 2009, more than 4,000 fewer than the year before and a lower number than the 228,204 marriages recorded in 1895. Just 1.92 per cent of unmarried women and 2.13 per cent of unmarried men wed during the year, compared with peak of 8 per cent of men and 6.3 per cent of women during World War II, when many rushed to marry before they were sent off to fight. Experts said the poor state of the economy was a leading factor in the deterioration of marriage rates. Jenny North, head of public policy at Relate, the counselling charity, said: “