On estimating: the percentage of people who will never marry

In 1997 the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated that if current marriage rates continued, some 40 per cent of Australian men and women would not get married. Though subsequently revised, this estimate has since been widely cited in academic and media discussions of the issue. This paper reviews the methods available to project marriage levels and concludes that the proportion of young Australians who will never marry will not rise above about 23 per cent for women and 27 per cent for men over the next decade or so. Copyright. Monash University and the author/s