Ahead of Tu B’Av, Israel releases data showing Israelis are marrying older

The Central Bureau of Statistics dishes all the data on Israeli romance ahead of the Tu B’Av holiday, which begins Thursday evening.

The figures are for 2017, the last year for which comprehensive data exists.

Among the 50,029 Israeli couples who married that year in official Israeli religious bodies, the bride’s average age was 25, and the groom’s 27.4. Brides are 3.5 years older and grooms 2.5 years older than they were in 1970, the bureau says.

Jewish weddings made up 71.6 percent (or 35,810) of those weddings, Muslim weddings 24.6% (12,324), Druze weddings 2% (1,002), and Christian weddings 1.7% (855).

In 87% of the weddings in 2017, both partners were marrying for the first time. Among 5.3%, both were divorcees.

With Israelis marrying later, more and more men and women are staying single through the end of their twenties. The percentage of single men ages 25-29 has risen from 28% in 1970 to 62% in 2017; among women it rose from 13% to 46%.

Figures are also rising for bachelorhood in the late forties, with unmarried men aged 45-49 rising from 3% in 1970 to 12% in 2017, and of women from 2% to 10%.

Israelis don’t just marry in Israel, of course. At least 15% of the weddings registered with the Interior Ministry in 2017 were not conducted in Israel and don’t count in the figures above, the CBS says. In all, 8,849 couple reported marrying overseas, most in a bid to sidestep the official state rabbinate. Of those, 1,935 of those weddings (or 22%) were between two Jews, mostly from families that immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union.

When they marry abroad, Israelis prefer Cyprus, which is one hour away by plane, where 38% of overseas weddings took place. The US comes second with 26%, followed by the Czech Republic with 14%.