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Populations of New Zealand and Australia at the Millennium

A joint Special Issue of the Journal of Population Research and the New Zealand Population Review

Edited by Gordon A. Carmichael with A. Dharmalingam

Published September 2002
ISBN 0-9578572-1-7

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MARRIAGE, COHABITATION AND MARITAL DISSOLUTION IN NEW ZEALAND
A. Dharmalingam, University of Waikato

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Abstract
Family formation in New Zealand has undergone major changes over the last 100 years, particularly since the end of the Second World War. The broad trends and patterns in New Zealand have paralleled those in other ‘neo-Europes’: the displacement of marriage by cohabitation, especially for first unions, and a sharp increase in dissolutions of legal marriages through separation and divorce. This paper focuses on three aspects of family formation where dramatic changes have occurred since the 1960s: marriage, cohabitation and marriage dissolution. Life-table approaches are used to derive the statistics analysed, and a cohort perspective is employed to discuss the results.