KEY POINTS:
Marriage is making a surprising comeback after years of decline, possibly because the strong economy is easing relationship strains.
The comeback is small so far: the proportion of two-parent families dropped from 90 per cent of all families with children in 1976, soon after the introduction of the domestic purposes benefit, to a low of 71 per cent in 2001.
It has picked up slightly to 72 per cent in the 2006 Census.
But a Ministry of Social Development study presented at a social policy conference in Wellington yesterday says other data from the quarterly household labour force survey show the proportion of sole parents peaked in 2003-04 and seems to have begun falling.
The decline has been particularly marked in families whose youngest child is under 3, while sole parenthood is still increasing for families whose youngest child is 14 or over.
Ministry analyst Moira Wilson said this indicated that the present generation of young parents were more likely to stay together than the generation before them.
"The younger generation has higher education, they are having children later, and they are enjoying a virtuous time in the economy where the men have jobs and the women have jobs if they want them. Older parents were affected by the difficult labour market in the late 1980s and early 1990s when their children were born."
The older generation was also affected most by an exodus of men to Australia and beyond, which caused an excess of women over men left in New Zealand in their 30s and 40s.
Social Development Minister David Benson-Pope told the conference the number on the DPB had dropped by 8000 in the past year and ministry figures suggested that the dominant driver had been the economy.
