According to the latest statistics released by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the proportion of married individuals in Germany has been steadily decreasing over the years. As of the end of 2023, only one in two adults in the country was married, amounting to 35 million people.
This represents a significant drop from 30 years ago, when around 39.3 million adults were married, making up 60% of the adult population. In 1993, there were approximately 15.8 million singles, which accounted for 24% of the adult population. Today, the proportion of singles has increased to around 33%.
Another trend is the increasing age of first-time marriage, with the average age of first-time marriage for women having risen by around six years and reaching a new high of 32.8 years, while men’s average age of first-time marriage has increased by around five years to 35.3 years. In 1993, the average age of first-time marriage for women was 26.8 years and for men, it was 29.2 years.
The overall number of marriages has been declining in the long term. In 2023, a total of 361,000 marriages took place, the second-lowest figure since 1950. More than three-quarters (78%) of the 722,000 people who got married did so for the first time, having never been married or widowed before.
Almost 97% of the marriages were between individuals of different genders, with around 3% being between same-sex partners. Since the introduction of same-sex marriage in October 2017, same-sex marriages have been included in the statistics since the 2018 reporting year.