In the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, 2020, marriages in Italy have almost halved. Due to the will or necessity – including closures, restrictions, contagions – to postpone or renounce the wedding, weddings celebrated in Italy were 96,841, 87,000 less than in 2019, equal to a percentage drop of 47.4%. The first data of 2021 were instead encouraging because in the first 9 months of last year the wedding doubled again: a recovery not sufficient, however, to recover what was lost.
Returning to 2020, according to the Istat report, weddings with a religious rite (-67.9%) and the first marriages (-52.3%) fell mainly. Civil unions between same-sex partners also decreased (-33.0%), separations (-18.0%) and divorces (-21.9%).
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The setback was observed starting from March 2020 with peaks in April and May: the months in which Italy was forced into a total lockdown and weddings were banned. Some containment measures (prohibition of gatherings, maximum number of people in the event of events) however concerned the whole of 2020 and continued into 2021. And there was not only the health crisis: the effects also weighed on the renunciations social and economic induced by the pandemic.
The collapse of the first wedding with spouses under 50
Above all, the first weddings fell, which in 2020 recorded a new low: only 69,743 (-52.3% compared to 2019). In particular, the first marriages with the groom between the ages of 30 and 39 (-55.8%) and those with the bride up to 39 years (-54.4%) decreased the most. A more limited decline concerns the first marriages in which both spouses are at least 50 years old (-26.9%).
Few guests cause Covid: marriages are falling more in the South than in the North
At a territorial level, the decline was much more pronounced in the South (-54.9%) than in the Center (-46.1%) and, above all, in the North (-40.6%). A signal also linked to the various celebrations that distinguish Italian traditions. Just take up the data from the “Families, social subjects and life cycle” survey carried out in 2016 to see how the prevalence of receptions with at least 100 guests is clear in the South (55.8% of receptions compared to 39.3% of the North), as well as for those with at least 200 guests (19.8% compared to 10.2%). Wedding celebrations with fewer than 30 guests, on the other hand, account for 12.1% in the North and only 3.5% in the South. Therefore, when a ceiling for guests has been fixed, due to Covid, there are those in the South who preferred to postpone rather than make a restricted wedding.
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Less religious and more civil rites, as weddings change
The vertical decline was recorded above all for marriages celebrated with a religious rite which is more than double that of civil marriages (-67.9% against -28.9%). For the latter this is the first exceptional setback after a phase of continuous growth. This imbalance has changed the incidence of marriages celebrated with a civil ceremony, from 52.6% in 2019 to 71.1% in 2020. For comparison, just think that the percentage was 2.3% of the total in 1970, 36 , 7% in 2008. The civil ceremony is decidedly more common in second marriages (96.7%), being in many cases an obligatory choice, and in marriages with at least one foreign spouse (95.4% compared to 65.2% of the marriages of both Italians). The choice of civil ceremony has also become increasingly widespread in the case of first marriages (61.1% in 2020). Also in this case there is a marked territorial variability: it goes from the minimum in the South (46.8%) to the maximum in the Center (60.9%), closer distances than in the past in the presence of a geography that remains substantially unchanged .
The flight of foreigners: from 4 thousand to a thousand for the stop to flights
Weddings with at least one foreign bridegroom are stable on the total number of marriages. Mixed marriages amount to over 14,000 a year (about 10,000 less than in 2019). On the other hand, the wedding of citizens who chose Italy as a location for their yes has undergone a severe decline: the restrictions on international mobility have weighed heavily and so have the weddings of couples of foreigners in which neither of them is resident in our country. country went from 4,094 in 2019 to 918 in 2020 (-77.6%).
The decline since the seventies. With the exception of the year 2000
The news of the collapse of marriages, however, is not new and is not entirely linked to the pandemic. For at least 40 years in Italy – the researchers of the Institute of Statistics reveal – there has been a tendency towards a decrease in nuptiality, linked to profound social and demographic transformations. Since the mid-seventies there has been both the postponement of the age at first marriage and the progressive spread of free unions (cohabitation more uxorio), almost quadrupled from the period 1999-2000 to 2019-2020 (from about 380 thousand to just under 1 million 400 thousand). The increase mainly depends on the growth of free unions of single and single persons (from 170 thousand to 863 thousand approximately). The low birth rate that has always been observed since the 1970s has also had an effect on marriages. Fewer young people means, according to Istat, fewer marriages even with the same propensity to marry. However, there were some curious oscillations: for example, an increase in marriages was observed in 2000. The turn of the millennium was also an attraction for the spouses who wanted to celebrate in such a symbolic year.
2021: double the wedding but it is not enough
The provisional Istat data for the first nine months of 2021 show that marriages have doubled compared to the same period in 2020. This recovery of the wedding, however, is not enough to recover those lost in 2020. Comparing, in fact, the first nine months of the 2021 with the same pre-pandemic period the variation remains negative (-4.5%) and in line with the decrease already experienced in more recent years. The type of marriage most recovering is that of the first religious marriages, which had recorded the greatest decline during the spread of the epidemic. These are in fact more than quadrupled (+ 228%) but, even in this case, the increase in 2021 does not bring back to pre-pandemic levels (-8.8% compared to the same period in 2019). A return to the levels of 2019 is instead observed considering the first civil marriages (-0.2% in 2021 compared to 2019), which therefore seem to have been less penalized. Even second marriages manage to touch the levels of 2019 (-0.8%) but we cannot speak of a recovery. Indeed, the number of marriages recorded in 2021 remains below what could be expected in consideration of their increasing trend. Considering the type of couple, the first nine months of 2021 confirm that the couples most penalized by the pandemic are those of both foreign spouses: they amount to just over half compared to 2019. Mixed couples also remain far below the pre- pandemics, albeit with a lower incidence, while the marriages of both Italian spouses show a very slight increase compared to the same period prior to the Covid-19 epidemic (+ 0.8%). Civil unions, which fell by a third in 2020, recorded an increase of more than 50% in the first nine months of 2021.