Publication details
The Marriage Squeeze and the Decline in the Number of Marriages in the Czech Republic in the 1990s
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2002 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | East Central Europe - L'Europe du Centre-Est. Eine wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Sociology, demography |
| Keywords | marriage squeeze; marriages; Czech Republic |
| Description | The Czech population went through significant demographic changes during the nineties. The number of marriages has been on the decrease and a new demographic structure has formed where there is a high proportion of young, single people. The fact is, that during the nineties, less and less people were getting married in the Czech Republic. Thus, a great supply of potential brides and grooms is now available in the marriage market. The question which the Czech public cannot dismiss is: will these unmarried men and women enter into marriage in the next few years or will they remain single for life? In order to be able to answer this question, I focused on those individuals who have remained single throughout the nineties and thought of the issue as a group of three interconnected questions: Which social groups have remained single during the nineties? Why have they stayed single? What marriage behaviour can be expected of them in the near future? The answer for the first question is: The greatest increase in the proportion of single adults has been among women and men with an elementary education. While there were very few single women with an elementary education in the early nineties, more than a fifth of elementary-educated women were single in 1999. This trend is mirrored also with men. In 1991, 18% of Czech men with elementary education were unmarried. In the late nineties, their proportion was 36%. The answer for the second question is: For the population occupying the marriage market in the Czech Republic, the nineties represent a demographic event known as a marriage squeeze. The marriage squeeze is one of the factors explaining the increase in the number of unmarried men and women with a low education in the Czech population. And the answer for the last question is: Even though the low educated single women and men are currently available in the marriage market, it is unrealistic to expect them to get married in the near future. Lower-educated women who failed to enter at least into a homogamous marriage due to the marriage squeeze in the mid-nineties quickly age and lose prospects of getting married year by year. Low-educated men who have remained single in the second half of the nineties due to the marriage squeeze may pin little hope on the new groups of young women available in the marriage market. Their potential partners perceive marriage as a social lift. They seek male partners who has completed a higher level of education than they have. In the near future, lower-educated single males living in rural areas will face great difficulties in searching for potential brides in their place of residence. |
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