DOES education affect your marriage prospects? For women, the older you are and the better educated you are, the less likely it is that you are married. For men, the converse holds, reflecting the traditional view of man as the breadwinner and woman as the homemaker.

Only 55.6 per cent of female third level graduates, aged 65 or more are married compared with 80 per cent of male graduates in the same age group. Marriage rates for women in this group increase as their level of education decreases so that 85.9 per cent of the cohort with primary education were married compared to 82.2 per cent of those with the Inter Cert and 78.4 per cent of those with the Leaving Cert.

The corollary is the case for many men: those with only primary level education are the least likely to marry. This may be due to differing patterns of behaviour among the rural, predominantly farming population, according to the report, as the tradition was for the man to wait until he had inherited the farm before he married.

The ESRI report notes that the low marriage rate for women with higher education may reflect the particularly difficult choice which faced highly educated women in the pre 1970 era. They had to choose between pursuing a career or marrying and having children.

The gap between the proportion of women with higher education who are married and the proportion of all other women is somewhat smaller for the age group 30 to 60 years but it is still significant. For men and women in their twenties, higher education tends to rule out early marriage.

The overall marriage rate has been falling for the past 15 years but research suggests that education has played only a minor direct role here. For the future, the ESRI states that the rising proportion of the population who are going on to third level education will contribute to a further fall in the marriage rate.

The changes in marriage rates are probably driven by many different factors which are interacting to produce the changing roles of women and men in society. Changing expectations as a result of increased education as well as wider cultural change are both important, according to the ESRI.

As to the future, the ESRI forecasts a postponement of marriage rather than its abandonment as a social institution. It assumes that the bulk of the population will continue to get married, but at a later stage of their lives.