Remarriage in Portugal: contemporary tendencies

Ana Cristina Ferreira, ISCTE
Cristina Lobo, ISCTE
Isabel Oliveira, ISCTE
Madalena Ramos, ISCTE

This research on remarriage in Portugal is based in the official data between 2001 and 2005. This analysis shows some patterns: - remarriage rates from widows and divorced persons are declining, but there is an increase in the percentage of remarriages within the overall amount of marriages caused by compositional effects; - divorced people, in spite of gender and age, have a greater propensity to remarry than widowed persons; - both divorced men and widowed men tend to remarry more often than women; - youngsters have a greater propensity to remarry than older people. The comparison between individual characteristics of persons involved in a remarriage and those that are involved in a first marriage shows that remarrying individuals are in general older and have experienced more often informal cohabitation before marriage. Remarrying spouses are more frequently parents with children from previous relations, tend to marry without religious ceremonies more frequently, and are less qualified than persons engaged in first marriages. A multivariate approach was done using multiple correspondence analysis and clusters analysis. This approach shows that it is possible to single out 3 distinct groups: - the first one is constituted by widowed and widows with children from an earlier marriage, with older ages and low educational attainment; - another cluster is made by women that have children from a previous marriage and marry youngest single men without children of their own. This group is characterised by middle educational skills; - the last group is constituted by divorced men with children and single women without children - in this case, men’s age tends to be higher and couples are ranked among the most educated groups. This study reveals an important endogamy: the unions tend to happen between spouses with the same characteristics in age and educational attainment.