With only 27 countries reporting, the European divorce rates in 2013 indicate that the countries with the highest divorce rates are: Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, & Denmark. Those with the lowest divorce rates are: Former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Malta.
See more world divorce trends.
These data are from Eurostat.
A nice summary of some theoretical and methodological issues to consider in studying divorce with some good references to this literature in Europe.
Terekhina S.A. Approaches to assessing the psychological well-being of minors when the parents divorce. Psikhologiia i pravo = Psychology and Law, 2015. no. 1, pp. 119–128. (In Russ., аbstr. in Engl.). Download PDF-fulltext (576 kb)
Only the abstract is in English, but this summary hints at some careful thinking about the conceptualization of “psychological well-being” in regards to children who have experienced the divorce of their parents.
Andersson, G., Obucina, O. & Scott, K. (2015). Marriage and Divorce of Immigrants and Descendants to Immigrants in Sweden, Stockholm Research Reports in Demography 2015: 14. (as noted on the paper this document has not received careful scientific review.)
A thoughtful examination of the marriage, divorce and remarriage patterns among immigrants to Sweden. The sample is large enough to examine variations among different immigrant groups (e.g., Eastern European and the Middle East/Africa). The authors explore the differential impact of “migration stress” on the marital patterns of immigrant children and adults.
The best source for the latest information about marriage and divorce trends in European countries is Eurostat….. included in their site is a tool for creating graphs of the information. See this example.
Eurostat periodically issues some nice charts and explanations of marriage and divorce trends in the OECD countries. Here is a sample of their work. Complete report on these trends. The report states,
“The crude divorce rates and their changes from 1970 to 2008 are presented in Chart SF3.1.E. During this period, divorce rates increased in most countries, except for Estonia and Latvia where divorce rates were high in 1970 (the increase in divorce rates in the United States from a similar base was also very small). There were large cross-national differences in crude divorce rates in 2008, and ranged from a low of less than one divorce per 1000 inhabitants in Chile and Mexico, to over 3 per 1000 inhabitants in Belgium and the United States.”
Thirty-nine European countries have reported their divorce rates to the United Nations. Russia continues to have the highest divorce rate. Ireland has the lowest divorce rate.
Some European countries have legalized divorce in the past 2 or 3 decades. The divorce rates in these countries are still very low. Italy legalized divorce in 1970, Spain legalized divorce in 1981, Ireland legalized divorce in 1995 and Malta legalized divorce in 2011. Only Spain has seen a dramatically large change in their divorce rate. Ireland has seen little change. Italy’s divorce rate has doubled. Malta has the lowest beginning rate of divorce.
The original source of this data can be found at Eurostat– Marriage & Divorce Statistics.
The United Nations updated their World Demographic Report which includes marriage and divorce rates. The data for Europe in 2011 is very complete (only two countries missing– Greece and Italy). (See comparison to the European divorce rates in 2010).
Gibraltor has the highest rate followed by Russia. Russia has had a consistently high rate of divorce but it is lower than in 2000. (see Russian divorce rates over the past 20 years). The rates of divorce in various countries reflect legal, cultural, and religious values.
Rates of cohabitation vary widely in Europe. In general, the northern countries have higher rates of cohabitation. The chart below illustrates the percentage of children that are growing up in households with cohabitating parents. (Note: The percentage of children living with cohabitating parents in the US is 2.9%.)
For more data about European families go to OECD Statistics.
There is a wide range of rates of cohabitation among the European countries. Below is a chart showing the rates of cohabitation for many of the European countries. These percentages were based on a report by the OECD and represent the most current rates from each country, they are not from the same year.
There is now an updated list showing the 2012 Divorce rates for 39 European countries.
The United Nations collects marriage and divorce data for the world. This chart provides an illustration of the crude divorce rate (number of divorces per 1000 population) for European countries in 2010. Several countries are not listed which did not report data in 2010. The most recent crude divorce rates for these countries is as follows: Albania, 1.1 (2008), Greece, 1.2 (2008), France, 2.0 (2009), Italy, .9 (2009), Portugal, 2.5 (2009), Great Britain, 2.0 (2009).
More UN demographic reports: