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In recent years, Mexicans seem to have lost faith in marriage. While the number of marriages in the country has shown a decline, divorces have become more and more frequent, according to marital status data issued by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) on the occasion of the Day of Love and Friendship (Valentine’s Day) .
While more than 584,000 marriages were registered in 2012 (the highest record in the country’s history), only 526,000 were registered in 2017 , which represented a 10% increase. On their part, divorces went from 99 thousand to 147 thousand during the same period, representing a 48.3% increase in just five years.
As a result, the number of relationships that ended up in divorce went from 17 to 28.1 per every 100 marriages between the years 2012 and 2017, representing an 11.1% increase.
Some of the main causes are: Unilateral divorce (54.5% of cases), mutual consent (36.3%), and separation for a period of two years or longer (3.4%) . Overall, these three causes accounted for 94.2% of the total between people of the opposite sex in 2017.
This alarming decline in marriages is partly due to the fact that an increased number of people are choosing to live in de facto unions, which results in a smaller number of legal unions.
Out of the total of couples between the ages of 15 and 29 years old , only 42.8% decided to get married in 2018 as opposed to the 59.7% who got married in 2008. By contrast, the number of people claiming to live in de facto unions went from 40.3% to 57.2% during the same period, which represented a 17% increase.
Regarding the overall marital status of the Mexican population, most people who fell in the 15-years-and-over age group were in a relationship (57.6%), while 31.7% of the population is single, and 10.7% are separated, divorced, or widowed.
This structure varies significantly depending on age group. It has been estimated that 67.8% of people between 15 and 29 years of age are single .
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