If you ask Anika Liversage, who researches ethnic minorities at Vive, the National Research and Analysis Center for Welfare, a large part of the reason must be found for a longer stay in Denmark.
– When you came up here, you continued practices from countries of origin. For example, from villages in Turkey, where people usually got married when they were 18-20 years old, she says.
In Denmark, people are also starting to study more. Simply because there is an opportunity for it, she says.
– Education helps to postpone the time of marriage. You get some completely different paths in adulthood, she says and points out that instead of women first and foremost getting married and having children, it suddenly also became important to get an education and do well in the society in which they live. in.
– The moment you have a longer education than your parents have ever come close to, you can say and do things in other ways than if you have no education, says Anika Liversage.
The study from the Rockwool Foundation also shows that people with a non-Western background are more likely to marry people who grew up in Denmark than was the case in 1994.
In 1994, nine out of ten spouses among 29-32-year-olds were married to people with non-Western backgrounds who had grown up abroad. In 2018, the number was three out of ten.
Tighter rules in the area of family reunification have come into play. And then the selection of potential spouses in Denmark has become larger, says Liversage.
– Rules on family reunification have made it significantly more difficult to get spouses up here from countries of origin than it was in the 1990s. But the development over time has also meant that there are more to choose from. It is easier to find a partner in Denmark with a similar background as yourself, she says.
Source: The Nordic Page