Registered marriages up by almost half in 2021

A total of 356,839 marriages were registered in 2021, an increase of 48.2 percent from the total registered marriages of 240,775 in 2020. This increase may have been brought about by the easing of quarantine measures due to the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which caused the lowest marriages registered over the past 50 years as recorded in 2020¹ .

Concurrently, the crude marriage rate (CMR)² increased to 3.2 or 3 marriages per thousand population from 2.2 marriages per thousand population in 2020. On the average, a total of 978 marriages were solemnized daily. (Figure 1, and Tables 1 and 3)

On the other hand, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) had the lowest number of registered marriages with only 2,337 or 0.7 percent of the total marriages in the country.

Meanwhile, the highest increase in registered marriages was observed in Bicol Region with 96.2 percent, from 12,212 in 2020 to 23,964 in 2021, whereas the NCR recorded the lowest at 25.5 percent. (Figure 2 and Table 2)

In 2021, December recorded the highest number of registered marriages with 52,788 or 14.8 percent of the total marriages in the country. The month of June ranked second with 34,943 (9.8% share), followed by the month of May with 34,246 (9.6% share). On the other hand, the month of August had the least number of registered marriages with 17,710 (5.0% share).

In terms of daily average, the months of December, June, May, and February recorded higher daily average compared to the national average with more than a thousand marriages per day. Meanwhile, the month of August had the lowest daily average of 571 marriages per day. (Figure 3 and Table 3)

Of the total number of registered marriages in the country, about one in every four involved males and females were aged 25 to 29 (79,860 or 22.4% share).  Around four in 10 men (136,613 or 38.3% share) married at these ages, and about the same proportion was observed for women (142,617 or 40.0% share). In 2021, median age of marriage was 27 years old for women and 29 years old for men. The same median ages were recorded in the previous year. 

The number of men who are over 50 years of age (9,964 or 2.8% share) was almost twice than the number of women of the same age group (5,388 or 1.5% share). (Figure 4, and Tables 4 and 5)

Marriages involving adolescent females were four times as much as those involving teenage males

In 2021, a total of 15,253 (4.3% share) marriages involved adolescent females below 20 years old. This is four times as much as marriages involving adolescent males (3,499 or 1.0% share). 

There were 351,869 registered marriages (98.6% share) between Filipino men and women, while 4,787 marriages (1.3% share) were between Filipinos and foreign nationals. Among intermarriages with foreign nationals, a total of 4,323 Filipino women (90.3% share) married non-Filipino men, while 464 (9.7% share) Filipino men married women of foreign nationals. Another 166 marriages were between both foreign nationals while the remaining 17 were with incomplete details on the citizenship of either male or female.

About one in four intermarriages were between Filipinos and American nationals (1,164 or 24.3% share), while marriages involving Filipinos and Chinese nationals accounted for 14.9 percent. 

The most number of intermarriages involving Filipino women were with American men (1,060 or 24.5% share), followed by Chinese (650 or 15.0% share), Indian (362 or 8.4% share), British (251 or 5.8% share), and Korean (234 or 5.4% share).

Of the total registered marriages in 2021, 141,183 or 39.6 percent were contracted through civil ceremony, -10.2 percentage point decrease from 2020 (49.8% share). About one-third (114,660 or 32.1% share) were officiated in Roman Catholic Church, while one in four (94,146 or 26.4% share) were performed in other religious rites. Marriages solemnized in Muslim traditions accounted for 1.1 percent of the total registered marriages, whereas 0.9 percent were performed in tribal ceremonies. (Figure 6 and Table 7)