The number of marriages with foreigners has grown in the Czech Republic
These are the latest official data available today, released by the Czech Statistical Office. As Vinegret.cz notes, in 2010-2013 the annual number of mixed marriages barely exceeded 4,000, but recently this figure has risen sharply. The growth was mainly driven by Czech women, who are increasingly choosing foreigners as husbands. Men marry foreign women almost twice as rarely.
Statisticians explain this by the fact that Czech women have a wider choice. There are far more young men coming to the republic for work than women.
Most often, Czechs choose citizens of Slovakia as life partners, who are not considered foreigners here. Czech-Slovak weddings account for a third of all mixed marriages. Preferences then diverge. Men mainly marry Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles. Women choose Germans, Britons, and Americans as husbands.
Sociologists see an economic aspect in this, preserved from socialist times, when through marriage to residents of Western countries, Czech women tried to escape the surrounding reality and secure better living conditions.
Czech statisticians also calculated the average duration of marriage in the country. Since 2000, the average marriage duration in the Czech Republic has increased from 11 years to 13.1 years. At the same time, the divorce rate remains high, despite a positive trend in recent years. Such data was published by the Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ).
According to the office's report, last year the divorce rate was 45.2%, while sixteen years ago it was at 41.4%. This indicator reached its maximum in 2010 – exactly 50%.
In total, 24,996 divorces were registered last year. In 38% of cases, women filed for divorce, in 20% – men.
As sociologists note, couples rarely indicate the real reasons for divorce in official documents. Therefore, the most common formal wording was "Difference of interests and views."