NETHERLAND MARRIAGE RATES

Fats Dobson blames the low marriage rates in the Netherlands on the legalization of gay marriage. If that were true, then the other states that have also legalized should also show a reduction in the marriage rate. The facts show otherwise, as a paper by Prof. M. V. Lee Badget demonstrates. In this graph, we see that legalization generally does not lower marriage rates.





Here's what Badget writes specifically about The Netherlands:

The slight dip in marriage rates in the Netherlands since 2001 is the result of a recession-induced cutback on weddings, according to Dutch demographers, and the actual number of marriages has gone up and down in the last few years, even before the legalization of same-sex marriage. ²

In the Netherlands, while 30% of children are born outside of marriage, only 21% of children under one live with unmarried parents, and by age five, only 11% live with unmarried parents.⁸

The same rapid rise in nonmarital births that that we see in the Netherlands in the 1990s also occurred in other European countries that initially had low nonmarital birth rates. Nonmarital birth rates have soared in in Ireland, Luxembourg, Hungary, Lithuania, and several other eastern European countries—all countries that do not allow same-sex couples to marry or register.²¹


It is true that the Dutch nonmarital birth rate has been rising steadily since the 1980’s, and sometime in the early 1990’s the nonmarital birth rate started increasing at a somewhat faster rate. But that acceleration began well before the Netherlands implemented registered partnerships in 1998 and gave same-sex couples the right to marry in 2001.


² Personal communication with Dr. Jan Latten, demographer with Statistics Netherlands (Personal communication, March 12, 2004). Falling birth rates are also likely tied to the drop in marriages, according to Dr. Joop Garssen of Statistics Netherlands (Personal communication, June 18, 2004).

⁸ Dr. Joop Garssen, Statistics Netherlands, personal communication, June 18,2004.

²¹ From 1990 to 2002, the changes in the nonmarital birth rates were as follows:
Netherlands 12.0% to 29.1%, Luxembourg 12.2% to 23.2%, Ireland 16.9% to 31.1%, Hungary 14.2% to 32.2%, Lithuania 7.0% to 27.9%, Slovakia 9.0% to 21.6%. Eurostat, “Live Births Outside Marriage,” available through http://europa.eu.int/comm/eurostat.