In the first six months of 2018, the Justice Ministry of Azerbaijan registered 27,525 marriages, but,
according
to the State Statistics Committee, over the same period 7,219 couples divorced. For every 1,000 people in the country there were 5.7 marriages and 1.5 divorces.
The rate of divorce is growing with alarming speed: according to the Statistics Committee, in the first six months of 2016 there were 6,281 divorces in Azerbaijan, with a total of 13,000 for the year.
Since the beginning of 2017, nearly one in four marriages has
ended in divorce
. In the first four months of 2017, 4,896 divorces were registered compared with 18,229 marriages for the same period.
In 2015, there were 68,773 marriages in total, against 12,764 divorces.
The lowest number of divorces since 1935 was recorded in 1945. That year, there were only 310 divorces.
According
to the sociologist Ali Aliyev, this trend may slow down the growth of Azerbaijan’s population.
In the period January-June 2018, the Justice Ministry registered 66,166 births. For every 1,000 people in the country, there were 13.6 births. Of those children, 1,238 were twins and 45 were triplets. Girls make up for 47% of the births, which is below the biological norm of 49.5%.
The gender disbalance among new births is changing the gender ratio in the country, where there are currently 1,005 women for every 1,000 men.
