Let's Get Married! The Choice of Wedding Date in Italy between Tradition and Secularisation, 1970-2019

Francesca Rinesi , Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Claudia Iaccarino, Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)

This paper explores the seasonality of marriages in Italy from 1970 to 2019, emphasizing the significance of this phenomenon and its connection to demographic and societal changes. Several religious, social, climatic, and economic factors influences the choice of wedding dates. Traditionally, some dates are favoured (e.g., Valentine's Day), while others are avoided, such as the 17th day of the month due to superstitions, especially if it falls on a Friday. Also celebrations during Lent or Sundays during Advent are widely avoided. Is this still true today? The study of changes in the marriage seasonality assumes importance not only for purely descriptive reasons of the historical evolution of the demographic phenomenon per se, but also because the changes observed may be considered as a proxy measure of the degree of secularisation of a population. Of particular interest, then, is to understand whether the detachment from traditional choices in the wedding date has affected the population as a whole or whether it has involved individuals with certain socio-demographic characteristics more than others. In this investigation, we used the microdata of all marriages celebrated in Italy from 1970 to 2019, as registered in the civil status register of the population. Multinomial logistic regression models make possible to investigate at micro level the role of several socio-demographic characteristic on marriage seasonality, other variables being equal.

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 Presented in Session P3. Migration, Economics, Policies, History