Singapore sees more marriages, less divorces in 2014: data

More couples have tied the knot while fewer have divorced in Singapore last year, according Department of Statistics (Singstat) data released on Wednesday.

A total of 28,407 marriages were registered in 2014, up 8.2 percent from the previous year, however, many have chosen to walk into the wedding hall at older ages, with the number of marriages below 30 years registered a lower number in 2014 compared to a decade ago, Singstat said.

The median age for grooms rose from 29.4 years old in 2004 to 30.2 years old in 2014, while the median age for brides also went up from 26.7 years old to 28.2 years old.

As a multi-racial society, Singapore has also seen more inter- ethnic marriages, which accounts for 20.4 percent of marriages last year. The figure was 13.1 percent ten years ago.

With the rise in marriages, the number of divorces has seen an opposite trend. A total of 7,307 marriages were dissolved last year, a 2.9 percent decline from the 7,525 dissolutions in the previous year, mainly due to a drop in the number of civil marital dissolutions.

The top two reasons for civil divorces were "unreasonable behavior" and "having lived apart or separated for three years or more," which takes up 51.9 percent and 44.8 percent, respectively. Endi