COVID-19 pandemic on Marriages in Spain

The present article shows the results concerning marriages in Spain during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic

First Wave of COVID-19 pandemic in Spain: initial results related to marriages Taking as a base secondary sources from National Statistics Institute of Spain (INE), such as Vital Statistics (in Spanish: Movimiento Natural de la Población), an analysis for the period 1950-2020 was made, considering the data at both national level and by each Spanish region.A special input is made on the first semester of 2020, the same period as the first wave/lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain.
Since 1975, the evolution of marriages had a decreasing trend in Spain.In fact, looking at the descriptive data, the unemployed data serial of Spain proves that an increase in unemployment is related to a decrease of marriages.This has occurred on previous crisis, such as the Spanish Democratic Transition (1975) and the financial crisis of 2007.Looking at the regional data, it is apparent that all regions were affected with a decrease of more than 50% (Table 1).Among the ones showing the highest decrease were Melilla (-68.3%),Castile-La Mancha (-67.7%) and Madrid (-66.9%).
Although it is too early to establish a pattern that will help understand the regional difference, Madrid was the region most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic across the country.However, it was also one of the epicentres of the pandemic in the world during the first wave of COVID-19.Madrid is an urban area, densely populated and key to the nation's economy by contrast to other areas like Castile-La Mancha, more rural and with an older population.
Source: own elaboration supported by INE Spain data.
It is important to point out that, in the year 2020, 94.21% of marriages were civil/legal and just 5.63% were Catholic marriages.The rest were marriages from other religions (0.03%) or other data (0.13%).Regarding homosexual unions, it can be highlighted that they have been increasing since 2005 (when Spain started to collect some data for this issue).
In addition, a bivariable analysis with some correlations between the decreasing trend in marriages with COVID-19 cases and deaths by 100,000 inhabitants has been produced, and the results have been a negative and weak correlation (see Figures 3, 4 and 5).As a result, the reduction of marriages could be explained by COVID-19 mortality rates across Spanish regions.

Economic variables in marriages: an econometric model
Looking at the first semester of 2020, marriages decreased in Spain just due to the COVID-19 pandemic.As noted before, during the first semester of 2020, there were only 28,327 marriages registered (-60.8% less than the same period of 2019).In addition, the increase in unemployment rates and lack of economic development is still happening, which it going to have other consequences.
It is known that difficulties in the labour market can influence a delay on unions, which is an important point related to the current pandemic economic crisis.
During 2020, the number of unemployed people increased by 8.72% (+283,100 new unemployed).
According to our results about nuptiality research in Spain since 1950, marriages were very determined with macro-economic indicators (Sanchis, 2020).An econometric model was made by us with the GDP per capita and unemployment rates: This econometric model suggests that an increase of marriages must be explained by an increase of GDP per capita and a decrease of unemployment.This model was tested in Spain for NUTS-1 (with unemployed data for the period 1950-2017) and NUTS-2 (with unemployment rates for the period 1975-2017) and the results confirmed that the model was significant at 1% (Prob > F=0) for NUTS-1.For NUTS-2, the number of observations multiply for each region (Autonomous Community in Spain) being n=266 years.The p value of F statistic (Prob > F=0) was significant to 1% and the Chi Square (Prob>Chi2=0,1936) was significant to 5%.

Conclusions
Some causes of decreasing marriages during COVID-19 are related to prevention measures and restrictions such us limitations of groups, social distancing, quarantine, difficulties to travel, or the fear of catching COVID-19.
In Spain, during the 1st Semester of 2020, marriages were 60.8% less than the year before in 2019.Every Spanish region was affected with a decrease of more than 50% of marriages, compared to the data of the previous year.Consequently, facing this pandemic, it can be thought that the expected trend in the future was a decrease of marriages because of economic reasons.Other possible behaviors could be a nuptial boom (due to delay "Pent-up demand", or the risk of mortality thinking about some rights and widow's pensions), a decrease of marriages because of couple ruptures or an increase of divorces.

Divorces in
In the future, researchers should evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on divorces, and the regional patterns by comparing Spain with other European regions (e.g., using regional data from other EU countries).

Figure 1
Figure1shows the deaths' evolution in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2020, and the peak of deaths, shown with provisional data, during the first lockdown in Spain.It is a good introduction to the Spanish context and evolution, just taking a glimpse of the data, especially to understand the first wave and lockdown.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Marriages growth-COVID-19 Cases /100k Spain have been decreasing since 2017, but still there are no official data for 2020, in the Spanish Institute of Statistics (INE) to know the COVID-19 effect.According to our results with econometric models in previous research, marriages were very determined by macro-economic indicators in Spain since 1950.