The Marriage Behavior of the Greek Population from 1991 to 2021: A Study Through Gross Nuptiality Tables

One of the most refined tools that have been devised for the analysis of marriage behavior of a population is the nuptiality tables. There are two main categories of such tables: gross and net. The latter (net tables) are primarily used for the study of reproduction in natural fertility populations, while the former (gross tables) are more suitable for comparing nuptiality among several populations, as differences in net tables may be due to differences either in mortality or in nuptiality or to an unknown mixture of both. In what follows, gross, abridged, period nuptiality tables have been constructed for the single population of Greece for four time points: 1991, 2001, 2011, and 2021. A significant decline in nuptiality was observed during the thirty-year period, with the age pattern of marriage being different by sex. While spinsters nowadays (2021) are more likely to marry at old ages (especially at ages above 40) than ever in the past, this is not the case for bachelors anymore. For a bachelor in Greece, the probabilities of marrying are lower in every age group than ever in the last 30 years.