Number of church marriages falls in relation to civil marriages.
Almost one fifth of all children in Croatia were born out of marriage in 2015, while the share of church marriages is declining. Just five years ago, there were twice as many church marriages as civil marriages, reports Jutarnji List on January 3, 2017.
According to demographic data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday, more than 18 percent of children in Croatia were born in common-law marriages. That share has doubled in the last 15 years since 2000, when just nine percent of parents of newborn children were not married. However, even with this increase, Croatia still remains one of the most traditional countries of the European Union, in which almost half of all children are born out of wedlock.
Among individual counties, the highest share of births out of wedlock was recorded in Međimurje County (39 percent) and Koprivnica-Križevci County (29 percent), while the smallest share was in Split-Dalmatia County, where just 8.4 percent of all children were born out of wedlock. Čabar in Primorje-Gorski Kotar Couty is the only town in Croatia in which the number of children born out of wedlock was higher than the number of children whose parents were married. The opposite record-holder is Imotski in inland part of Split-Dalmatia County, where just 3 of the 108 children were born out of wedlock.
Church marriages accounted for 55.9 percent of all marriages. There were 34 towns and four counties in which the number of civil marriages was higher than the number of religious marriages – Sisak-Moslavina County, Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Virovitica-Podravina County and Istria County.
In 2015, there was a very large number of divorces, more than 6,000 of them, and in two-thirds of all divorces parents had underage children. In just 10.7 percent of all cases children continued to live with their father after divorce.
