According to a report, "[m]arriage has become dramatically less common in Germany with a third of women and nearly 40 percent of men staying single for life – double the figures of 30 years ago."
The report continues:
"The development was most striking among men in the former East German states. Just 12 percent remained unmarried for life in 1980, a figure that has shot up to 41 percent today.
Some 31.8 percent of women from the former East remain unmarried, compared with 8 percent in 1980.
In the former West, the proportion of men who never marry has risen from 24 percent to 36.2 percent over the same period. For western women, the rise was from 14 percent to 30.5 percent."
While the increase in the percentage of those not getting married was much greater in the former east than in the west, the current percentages of unmarrieds in the west and east are not all that different. The main difference was that the number of people not getting married in the east was very low in 1980, and now it has dramatically increased. So why the huge increase in the east?*
One reason, not mentioned in the article, actually goes more to explain why the percentage of unmarrieds was so much lower in East Germany than West Germany in 1980. And that reason is simple: The number unmarrieds was low in East Germany because, if you wanted to move out of your parents’ house or apartment and live on your own, you had to get married. That was the only way to get your own apartment.
In other words, when the Wall fell, one of the reasons so many East Germans got married fell, too.
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* Other than the general increase in people just living together instead of getting married.
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