GLOSSARY
Age-specific marriage rates
In this collection, age specific marriage rates relates the number of marriages of males or females registered in a calendar year, by age at marriage, to the estimated resident population in the same age group. For 2007 data, males and females aged under 16 years are excluded from the population as they are ineligible to marry under Australian legislation. For earlier years, males and females aged under 15 years are excluded from the population.
Couples who lived together prior to marriage
Couples who lived together prior to marriage include those who identify their usual residence on the Notice of Intended Marriage as the same address. This may also be referred to as cohabitation.
Children
Children in the marriage collection refer to persons under 16 years of age born from a previous marriage of either the male or female getting married.
Crude marriage rate
The crude marriage rate is the number of marriages registered during the calendar year per 1,000 estimated resident population at 30 June. For years prior to 1992, the crude marriage rate was based on the mean estimated resident population for the calendar year. In the interpretation of this rate, it must be kept in mind that a large and varying proportion of the population used in the denominator is below the minimum age of marriage or is already married.
Estimated resident population (ERP)
The official measure of the population of Australia is based on the concept of residence. It refers to all people, regardless of nationality or citizenship, who usually live in Australia, with the exception of foreign diplomatic personnel and their families. It includes usual residents who are overseas for less than 12 months. It excludes overseas visitors who are in Australia for less than 12 months.
Main English-speaking countries
This refers to the main countries from which Australia receives, or has received, significant numbers of overseas settlers who are likely to speak English. These countries comprise the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and the United States of America. All other countries are classified as Non Main English-speaking countries.
Marital status
In this collection, marriage refers to registered marital status only. Registered marital status is a person's relationship status in terms of whether he or she has, or has had, a registered marriage with another person. Accordingly, people are classified as either 'never married', 'married', 'widowed' or 'divorced'. Registered marital status is the concept used in the Marriages collection.
Social marital status, which refers to relationship status of an individual with reference to another person who is resident in the household, is not included in this collection.
Marriage
Marriage refers to registered marriages only. Under the Australian Marriage Act 1961 (Commonwealth) , a marriage may be celebrated by a minister of religion registered as an authorised celebrant, by a district registrar or by other persons authorised by the Attorney-General. Notice of the intended marriage must be given to the celebrant at least one calendar month but within eighteen calendar months before the marriage. There are circumstances when the parties may be granted permission to shorten the required time for notice to be given, see Subsection 42(5) of the Australian Marriage Act 1961 and Regulation 39 of the Marriage Regulations 1963 and schedule 1B to the Regulations. A celebrant must submit an official certificate of the marriage for registration in the state or territory in which the marriage took place within fourteen days.
Median value
For any distribution, the median value (e.g. age, length, interval) is that value which divides the relevant population into two equal parts, half falling below the value and half exceeding it. Where the value for a particular record has not been stated, that record is excluded from the calculation. Medians for grouped data (e.g. age in whole year age groups) are calculated as the value which divides the population into two equal parts, assuming that all observations within the group are evenly distributed across the range. This is applied using the following formula:
Where:
L = lower limit of the interval containing the median
I = width of the interval containing the median
N = total number of respondents
F = cumulative frequency corresponding to the lower limit
f = number of cases in the interval containing the median
State or territory data
State and Territory data refer to the state or territory in which the marriage was registered rather than where the couple reside. See Explanatory Notes 31-32 for further information.
Year of registration
Data presented on year of registration basis relate to the date the marriage was registered with the relevant state or territory Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
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