Some causes and consequences of the low Irish marriage rate

Abstract

In countries more happily circumstanced it is only necessary to trace and to account for the fluctuations of the marriage rate. Here it is not only necessary to discover why more people got married during one period than during another but also to ask why in any period, even in that period in which the marriage rate was at its highest, more people did not get married; why the proportion of unmarried people has steadily increased; why the average age of marriage has grown later. In this paper it is intended to review these aspects of our social life and to point to some possible explanations of their presence but at the outset it must be emphasised that such a review can only claim to be of a most general nature since many points raised are in themselves worthy of far closer attention than they have hitherto received.