The number of couples in Taiwan who divorced within five years of getting married reached a 10-year high last year, according to statistics released by the Ministry of the Interior Friday.
A total of 16,639 couples, which accounted for 34.75 percent of the total number of divorced couples, ended their marriage after being married for less than five years, the statistics showed.
Meanwhile, the number of divorced couples in Taiwan overall dropped for the fourth consecutive year to 47,888 last year, the numbers showed.
Of the divorced couples, 47,381 were heterosexual couples, while 1,507 were same-sex couples, the data showed.
The percentage of divorces in which both spouses were Taiwanese totaled 86.4 percent, while divorced transnational couples constituted 13.6 percent, the numbers showed.
The data showed that the median value of years married was 7.95, indicating that 50 percent of divorced couples ended their union within eight years of getting married.
That was down 0.15 years compared to data released in 2020 and represented a decrease of 1.07 years compared to data published in 2012.
The number of years married has steadily declined after reaching a high of 9.1 years in 2014, the statistics showed.
Those who got divorced in under five years hit a 10-year-high and made up the largest proportion with 16,639 couples, or 34.75 percent, followed by couples who were divorced within five to 10 years of their marriage, of which there were 11,198, or 23.38 percent, the numbers showed.
Notably, the number of couples who get divorced within five years of marriage has risen every year since 2013, with the number above 30 percent annually, the statistics showed.
The number of divorced couples fluctuated between 2012 and 2017, peaking in 2012 with 55,835 couples, before dropping for four years in a row since 2018.
According to statistics released by the Ministry of the Interior, 114,606 couples got married last year — a decline of 5.83 percent compared to the number recorded in 2020.
As of the end of last year, a total of 10.22 million people in Taiwan were married, which translated to a marriage rate of 43.76 percent, while a total of 1,875,561 people were divorced, the statistics showed.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel