Average lifetime in a marriage for women (crude mean duration), latest available year

This statistic reports the crude mean duration of marriage for women (in years) as compiled in the UN Demographic Yearbook’s marriage and divorce tables from national vital registration and civil status systems. Conceptually, it describes the average length of marriages that ended (typically by divorce) in the reference year, calculated as the mean number of years between the date of marriage and the date the marriage was dissolved.

It’s an unusually revealing “relationship demography” indicator because it captures not just how often divorce occurs, but *when* it occurs in the marriage lifecycle—helping distinguish countries where divorces tend to happen early (shorter durations) from those where they occur later. Cross-country comparisons should be made carefully because coverage, legal definitions, and whether the dissolution is divorce-only (vs. including annulments) can vary by national statistical practice.