The survey on marriages
The survey on marriages, was established in 1926. It is an individual and exhaustive survey, which collects the data of all the marriages celebrated in Italy and it allows the analysis of the phenomenon of nuptiality in relation to the main socio-demographic characteristics of the spouses. The survey uses the Istat D.3 model, compiled by the officer of the municipality where the marriage was celebrated. The model is divided into two parts: the first one collects the information about the marriage: the date, the rite of celebration (religious or civil), and the common property regime chosen by the couple (joint or separated ownership of property); the second one collects information about the spouses: date of birth, place of birth, place of residence at the time of marriage, future place of residence of the spouses, marital status, education level, occupational status, professional position, sector of economic activity, citizenship.
The most recent changes to the model were made in 1995, with the inclusion of the property regime variable, in 1997 with the refinement of information on citizenship, asking to specify, when Italian, whether "by birth" or "acquired," and in 2018, with the collection of the municipality of birth (previously only the province was recorded), the names and surnames of the spouses, and the introduction of greater detail in the classifications of marital status and educational qualifications.
The data collected through the survey has been published in the Yearbook of Demographic Statistics until the year of survey 1987 and, from 1988 to 2003, in the Yearbook of Marriages, Separations, and Divorces. The data update is accompanied by an informative note that illustrates the main results (Marriage in Italy from 2004 to 2013, Marriages, Separations, and Divorces in 2014 and 2015, Birth and Fertility of the Resident Population in 2016 and 2017, Marriages and Civil Unions in 2018, and Marriages, Civil Unions, Separations, and Divorces from 2019).
Glossary
Mean age at first marriage: Mean age of never married spouses, weighted by specific nuptiality rates.
Total first marriage rate: Sum of the age-specific marriage rates of never married spouses for each single age.
Age-specific marriage rate: The ratio of spouses of age x to the average resident male/female population of the same age, multiplied by one thousand. Specific rates can also be calculated by marital status.
Civil rite: A civil marriage is a marriage celebrated in a municipality, or in an institutional hall belonging to the municipality, in front of a civil status officer.
Religious rite: A religious marriage is a marriage celebrated in front of ministers of the Catholic faith (governed by the civil code and regulated by the agreements between the Holy See and the Italian State - Lateran Treaty of 1929) or ministers of other religious denominations recognized by the Italian State.