A decline in the number of people getting married in the UK has prompted calls for the Government to introduce financial incentives for people to tie the knot. It follows an increase in marriages in Hungary where the Government there introduced pro-marriage policies.
The Marriage Foundation charity has suggested Britain also find ways to encourage people to get married to reverse the downward trend. It praised Hungary's success as 'nothing short of a miracle', the Telegraph reports.
Hungary has introduced a number of policies, including married couples being able to get a one-off payment of £28,000 to go towards a house - but they have to pledge to have three children. They can also apply for a further £40,000 residential loan on the same basis.
And for married couples where the wife is between 18 and 40, a loan of £25,000 can also be accessed interest free. Repayments can be reduced or even suspended if the couple have one or two children, the Telegraph reports.
However, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orban has faced criticisms over its policies regarding same-sex couples and immigration.
The founder of the Marriage Foundation, Sir Paul Coleridge, was quoted in the Telegraph saying: “No one is suggesting that Hungarian social policies should be adopted wholesale (indeed some are unacceptable),” he said.
“However, what the research demonstrates is that if the Government backs marriage unequivocally and supports this attitude with proper financial incentives, the downward trend can and is likely to be reversed.”
Marie Stopes International’s public affairs advisor Louise McCudden told the Telegraph that there was no “right or wrong number of marriages, just as there is no right or wrong number of births or terminated pregnancies."
She added that any suggestion that governments should proactively encourage an increase in fertility was “alarming”.
According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, there were 219,850 marriages in total in England and Wales in 2019, a decrease of 6.4% from 2018. Marriage rates for opposite-sex couples have fallen to their lowest on record since 1862; in 2019, for men, there were 18.6 marriages per 1,000 unmarried men; for women, there were 17.2 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women.
Speaking when the figures were published in May 2022, Dr James Tucker, Head of Health and Life Events Analysis, Office for National Statistics said: "[The] data show a decline in marriage rates for opposite-sex couples while rates for same-sex couples have remained the same.
"The number of opposite-sex marriages has fallen by 50% since 1972. This decline is a likely consequence of increasing numbers of men and women delaying marriage, or couples choosing to live together rather than marry, either as a precursor to marriage or as an alternative. Future analysis will show the impact of the pandemic on marriages rates."
