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• Marriage by neighbourhood and social class

Featured Issue
Marriage by neighbourhood and social class

The new Census data released last week allows you to discover all kinds of interesting demographics about your own electoral division, and even your own part of your neighbourhood. (See below).

In an overarching sense, what the new data show is that a huge marriage gap now exists between the social classes. This is particularly pronounced in the cities. To put it in a nutshell, the middle classes by and large still get married, stay married, and wait until they are married before they have children.

The picture is entirely and radically different in our most disadvantaged areas.

The following comparisons drawn from the new Census data will suffice to show how wide the gulf is. They look at the percentage of children who are being raised by lone parents per electoral division, and also the number of people who are separated or divorced as a percentage of those currently married.

The figures speak for themselves. Clearly social disadvantage is doing enormous harm to marriage in many parts of Ireland. In turn, the decline of marriage is causing further disadvantage.

When our politicians speak about marriage and the family they must be aware that there are now two very different Irelands.

As mentioned, you can find out from the newly released Census about your own electoral division (which aren’t always named directly after your area) if you click here and then search for it.

The website also allows you to go down to the level of Small Area Populations (SAPS) which are basically areas consisting of around 250 people.