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Monday, January 29, 2007

Spotlight: Marriages

Same-sex marriages

FOR THE FIRST TIME, Statistics Canada has released information on same-sex marriages.

Following provincial court rulings in 2003, vital statistics registries in Ontario and British Columbia started registering marriages of same-sex couples.

Marriage statistics by sex are not available for Ontario, however, as the province does not identify whether a marriage is opposite-sex, male same-sex, or female same-sex, or the sex of the person getting married.

That being said, data are available for British Columbia. 

Close to 22,000 marriages occurred in British Columbia in 2003. Of those, 3.5% were between people of the same sex. Of the 774 same-sex marriages in British Columbia, 422, or 54.5%, were female couples and 352, or 45.5%, were male couples.

More than one-quarter of women who married another woman had previously been married, while 14.2% of the men who married another man had previously been married.

In British Columbia, people who married someone of the same sex had an average age at first marriage of around 13 years older than those who married someone of the opposite sex.

In 2003, Canada was the only country in the world that allowed same-sex marriages between people who were not residents of its territory. Nearly two-thirds of those who entered into a same-sex marriage in British Columbia were not residents of Canada. On the other hand, only a small proportion-about 5%-of people marrying someone of the opposite sex in that province did not reside in Canada.

While the 2003 Vital Statistics - Marriage Database is the first source of data on same-sex married couples in Canada, the 2001 Census was the first census in Canada to provide data on same-sex partnerships. The 2006 Census also included a question on same-sex common-law partnerships.

See also
Marrying later THE DAILY – Marriages