Future Trends in the Employment of Married Women

HIS PAPER is directed towards providing a numerical back| ground to the subject, to showing how the numbers of married s women in employment have been changing and how it seems likely they will change in future, with particular reference to the present trend for fewer women to remain unmarried and for those who marry to do so at younger ages than in the past. The first thing to do, then, ss to establish what this trend is. Of women born more than half a century ago in Great Britain, fully I5 per cent have never married but have remained spinsters. Of those women at present in their early 40's, go per cent have already married, so that the proportion of this group who never marry can reasonably be expected to fall below IO per cent in future. Of women at present in their early 30's about 89 per cent have already married and the proportion of this group who never marry will almost certainly fall well below IO per cent in future. For younger women, if we assume that the marriage rates for single women of different ages derived Eom the experience of the year I957 remain constant, the proportion never marIying will fall to about 5 per cent. This particular trend can therefore be described as a fall from I5 per cent to about 5 per cent in the proportion of women who never marry. As regards earlier marriage, one way to observe this trend is to look at the changes in the proportion married among women aged I5-I9, 20-24 and 25-29. Table B shows these proportions for I95I,I958 and I973. The figures for I95I were derived Eom the census tabulations by age and marital condiiion, and those for I958 from estimates made by the Registrars General. The figures for I973 are taken fFom estimates prepared in the Government Actuary's Department which can be described, broadly, as being based on marriage rates only a little higher than the I957 experience, i.e. taking some account of the current upward trend in marriage rates. The increase in the proportions marrying at these young ages is apparent, but the relatively small figure for agegroup I5-I9 in I973, only 7 per cent, hides the rapid increase in the proportion married from nil at age I5 to more than 25 per cent at age

Demographic economics · Economics · demographic modeling and climate adaptation · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism

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