The study by confused.com analyzed OECD data by country to reveal the countries with the lowest divorce rates across the world.

 

The research in full can be read here.

 

Rank	Country	Divorces per 1,000 people
1	Malta	0.5
2	Republic of Ireland	0.7
2	Mexico	0.7
4	Slovenia	0.8
5	Italy	1.1
6	Romania	1.2
7	Bulgaria	1.3
7	Croatia	1.3
9	Poland	1.4
10	Hungary	1.5

 

Looking just at Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, Malta is where couples are most likely to stay together. Here, the divorce rate is just 0.5 per 1,000 people. Divorce was only legalized in Malta in 2011, and rates are at their lowest since. There was an initial boom in 2012 when there were 1.1 divorces per 1,000 people, but this steadily declined and is now 0.5. That's around 3.5 times lower than in the UK.

 

There are 2 countries tied in second place, the first of which is the Republic of Ireland, with a divorce rate of 0.7 per 1,000 people. One of the possible reasons for this is that couples must prove that they've been living apart for 4 years before getting divorced. This obviously makes it harder for couples to get divorced, which could mean they're less likely to do so.

 

Also with a divorce rate of 0.7 per 1,000 people is Mexico. While the divorce rate in Mexico remains low, it has been increasing over the last 2 decades or so. The rate increased from 0.4 per 1,000 people in 1993 to 1.3 in 2019, before dropping to 0.7 in 2020. This change in 2020 is likely to have been influenced by the coronavirus pandemic.

 

Bulgaria is among the EU countries with the lowest number of divorces per 1000 people. This is what a Eurostat survey shows.

According to the data of the European Statistics Agency, only 1.6 per 1,000 people ended their marriage in 2019, which puts Bulgaria at the bottom of the ranking in terms of the number of divorces. Only Malta and Ireland have fewer registered divorces - 0.7 per 1,000 people, followed by Slovenia (1.2), Italy (1.4) and Croatia (1.5).

 

At the other extreme are Latvia, Lithuania and Luxembourg (all 3.1 divorces per 1,000 people), Cyprus (2.6) and Sweden (2.5).

At the same time, in 2019, Bulgaria was in the "golden middle" of the EU in terms of the number of marriages - 4.2 per 1,000 people. This is a slight increase from 2018, when marriages were 4.1 per 1,000 people.

For 2019, Cyprus (8.9 marriages per 1,000 people), Lithuania (7), Latvia and Hungary (6.7), as well as Romania (6.6) stand out with the most marriages per capita. They are followed by Slovakia (5.4), Denmark and Malta (5.3).

The lowest marriage rates were reported in Italy (3.1), Portugal and Slovenia (3.2), and also in France, Spain and Luxembourg (3.5).

The long-term trend in the EU shows that the number of marriages is falling, while the number of divorces is increasing.

 

Since 1964, the marriage rate in the EU has fallen from 8 per 1,000 people in 1964 to 4.3 in 2019. At the same time, however, the divorce rate has more than doubled, from 0.8 per 1,000 people in 1964 to 1.8 in 2019.

/Confused.com, Eurostat