The ‘urban–rural divide’ at question: exploring the long-term shift of marital age in Greece

While marital age is the highest worldwide, spatial disparities still exist among European regions. Although Mediterranean societies were traditionally characterized by high propensity to marriage, mean age at marriage in recent times has converged to particularly high levels typical of Western and Northern Europe. Since a spatially explicit analysis of nuptiality patterns is relatively scarce for Southern European countries, the present study investigates marriage timing in 51 Greek prefectures, assuming changes in the local context as a factor leading to marriage postponement. A positive trend in the age at marriage was observed in Greek prefectures between 1980 and 2017. While differences in the mean age at marriage diverged substantially between rural areas and urban contexts in the early 1980s, social factors leading to differentiated patterns of marriage postponement caused a greater spatial heterogeneity in marriage timing in more recent times. Results of this study outline the importance of local contexts shaping social attitudes and behaviors toward marriage. Increasingly complex demographic processes were observed along the urban–rural gradient, whose investigation requires more integrated approaches focusing on population patterns at both micro- and macro-scale.