The Filipinos’ view of love, marriage and relationships has changed dramatically between 2015 and 2020, with the young generation of Filipinos who are romantically involved preferring to cohabit even before matrimony, data released Friday by the Philippine Statistics Authority indicated.
A survey conducted by the Catholic Church last year confirmed the shift in the young Filipinos’ perception of matrimony—a result that it found a “challenge” to its mission to evangelize.
The PSA said the Census of Population and Housing in 2020 showed that 79.4 percent of the estimated 108.7 million Filipinos, or 86.3 million, belong to the 10 years and older bracket, up from 78.9 million in 2015. This is the age group used by the PSA in estimating the marital status of Filipinos.
While the number of married individuals still increased by 1.4 million to 33.8 million in 2020. But as percentage of the population, this was down to 39.2 percent from 41 percent in 2015, data showed.
The number of single persons, meantime, declined to 34.3 million from 34.6 million over the five-year period but as a proportion of the population the fall is more dramatic to 39.7 percent from 43.8 percent.
Although there are increases in the number of widowed as well as those who were separated, divorced or whose marriages were annulled, the increases weren’t as significant as the jump in percentage of couples who choose to live together.
As a percentage of the population, those living in jumped to 14.7 percent in 2020 from 9.2 percent in 2015—a 5.5 percentage point surge equivalent to 5.44 million more Filipinos deciding to cohabit with their significant other before getting hitched to an estimated 12.7 million.
The Veritas Truth Survey, an online survey conducted early last year by Catholic Church-owned Radio Veritas, showed that 45 percent of Filipinos “believe that being married is not necessary before living together,” according to the Catholic Bishop Conference of the Philippines.
The CBCP added that 40 percent of respondents agree that couples should get married first while 15 percent are undecided—an outcome the Catholic Church calls “challenging”.
Radio Veritas conducted the nationwide survey for the whole month of January last year, with a total 1,200 respondents and a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
The survey also revealed the wide gap in Filipino generations’ perception of marriage, with 58 percent of those between the ages of 21 and 39 believing that marriage is not a prerequisite to living together. Meantime, 48 percent of those between 40 and 60 years old and 61 percent of those over 60 years believe people should get married first before cohabiting with their partner.
The PSA census only categorized the Filipinos to be either male or female, and didn’t include their sexual identity. In 2020, the number of males living in with their partner increased to 6.35 million from 3.56 million in 2015 while females in their same arrangement rose to 6.3 million from 3.66 million.
