Countries With The Lowest Divorce Rates In The World

The global crude divorce rate, the standard cross-country measure of marriage dissolution, sits at roughly 1.7 to 1.8 divorces per 1,000 population per year as of 2025. National figures range from above 5 per 1,000 in the Maldives (the long-standing global high) down to roughly 0.1 per 1,000 or lower in India, the country widely cited as having the lowest divorce rate in the world. The ten countries below have the lowest reported crude divorce rates worldwide. In several, low rates reflect substantial legal or religious barriers to divorce rather than the durability of individual marriages; in others, the data partly reflect under-registration of separations that occur outside the formal legal system. A reference table of 30 countries with low to moderate divorce rates follows.

The crude divorce rate counts annual legal divorces per 1,000 mid-year population. It is the most widely used international metric because it is registry-based and comparable across statistical systems, but it has known limitations. Countries with low marriage rates can post low divorce rates without their marriages being particularly durable, informal separations (common in much of Latin America and parts of Asia) do not appear in registry data, and a few countries with very low rates (notably India) are sometimes omitted from international comparison tables because their national civil registry coverage is incomplete by United Nations standards. The figures in this article draw on UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs data, Eurostat for European countries, India's National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4 and NFHS-5), and national statistical office releases.

India

India is widely cited as the country with the lowest divorce rate in the world. The crude divorce rate is roughly 0.01 to 0.1 per 1,000 population, depending on source and methodology. The National Family Health Survey shows the share of ever-married Indians who are currently separated or divorced rising from 0.6 percent in 2005-06 (NFHS-3) to around 1 percent in 2015-16 (NFHS-4), with later state-level data suggesting continued slow growth. India is sometimes omitted from cross-country comparison tables produced by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs because national civil-registry coverage of divorces is incomplete; state-level family courts handle most of the data and aggregate reporting to the national level is partial.

Indian marriage law is divided by religious community: the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 governs most Indian marriages, the Special Marriage Act of 1954 governs civil and inter-religious marriages, and Muslim, Christian, and Parsi marriages are each governed by their own personal-status laws. The Hindu Marriage Act permits divorce on grounds including adultery, cruelty, desertion of two years, and (since the 1976 amendment) mutual consent after a one-year waiting period. The form of Muslim divorce known as triple talaq was criminalised by the Indian Supreme Court in 2017 and by federal legislation in 2019. A 2013 IPSOS survey found that roughly 74 percent of Indians under 30 indicated a preference for arranged marriage; the cultural acceptance of arranged-marriage matching, which involves substantial family vetting before the marriage takes place, continues to shape Indian marriage norms. Urban metros (Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru) have seen divorce filings rise roughly 30 to 40 percent over the past decade, with women reportedly initiating around 70 percent of contemporary divorces.

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has the lowest reported crude divorce rate in the world at approximately 0.15 divorces per 1,000 population in 2025, equivalent to a few hundred legal divorces per year across a country of 22 million people. The country's divorce law operates under three distinct personal-law regimes: the Civil Procedure Code for most citizens, the Kandyan Marriage and Divorce Act for ethnic Sinhalese under Kandyan custom, and the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act for the Muslim minority. The combined registry-based rate is low across all three.

The country's principal legal grounds for divorce remain restrictive (adultery, malicious desertion of two years, and incurable impotence at the time of marriage are the main grounds under general law). Most divorces require litigation through the district court system, which is slow and expensive. Cultural pressure to remain married is also high across the country's Sinhalese-Buddhist, Tamil-Hindu, and Muslim communities. Civil-society organisations including the Women in Need foundation in Colombo have documented that domestic violence and informal separation are far more common than the legal divorce data suggest.

Vietnam

Vietnam reports a crude divorce rate of roughly 0.2 per 1,000 population. Marriage and family law in Vietnam is governed by the 2014 Law on Marriage and Family, which permits no-fault divorce and recognises both husband and wife as having equal rights to file. Despite this relatively permissive legal framework, divorce remains uncommon: Confucian cultural norms emphasising family continuity and filial obligation, combined with strong rural family structures, continue to constrain divorce in much of the country.

The rate is rising sharply in urban centres, however. Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi both saw notable increases in divorce filings in the 2020s, with court data from the Vietnamese Ministry of Justice showing divorce rates in Ho Chi Minh City running several times the rural national average. Demographers attribute much of the urban increase to a growing economic independence among urban women, later age at first marriage, and rising acceptance of divorce among younger generations.

Guatemala

Guatemala reports a crude divorce rate of roughly 0.2 per 1,000 population, the lowest in Latin America. The country has the lowest divorce rate of any country in the Americas by a substantial margin. Marriage in Guatemala is governed by the Civil Code of 1963, which permits divorce by mutual consent or for cause but requires court proceedings in most cases. The country's strong Catholic and Evangelical Christian religious culture, combined with the prevalence of common-law unions (uniones de hecho) that exist outside formal marriage, both depress the registry-based divorce rate.

Census data show that close to a third of Guatemalan adult unions are common-law rather than legally registered marriages, particularly in rural and indigenous Maya communities. Couples in these informal unions who separate do not appear in any divorce registry. The 2017 Family Code reforms expanded recognition of de facto unions and simplified property division at separation, but did not significantly change the legal divorce procedure itself.

Malta

Malta legalised divorce in October 2011, the last European Union member state to do so, following a national referendum in May 2011 in which 53 percent of voters approved the change. Before 2011, married Maltese couples seeking to separate could obtain only annulments through ecclesiastical or civil courts, or legal separations that left them married but living apart. The country's crude divorce rate now sits at roughly 0.6 per 1,000 population, the lowest in the EU.

Maltese divorce law requires the couple to have lived apart for at least four years out of the last five before filing, the longest mandatory separation period in the EU. The Catholic Church remains the dominant religious institution in Malta, and church-court annulments continue alongside the civil-court system. Despite the country's small size, the divorce rate is rising slowly year over year as the post-2011 generation of marriages enters its second decade.

Ireland

Ireland legalised divorce in 1996 following a narrow 50.3 percent referendum approval. The country's crude divorce rate now sits at roughly 0.7 per 1,000 population, low by European standards but well above Malta. Ireland's 2019 referendum shortened the mandatory pre-divorce separation period: the previous standard of four years out of the previous five was cut to two out of the previous three, modernising the country's divorce procedure significantly.

Roughly 12 to 15 percent of Irish marriages end in divorce, far below the western European average of 35 to 45 percent. Demographers attribute the low rate to a combination of factors: the comparatively recent legal availability of divorce, ongoing Catholic cultural influence on attitudes toward marriage, the high cost and procedural complexity of divorce in Ireland, and a relatively older average age at first marriage that correlates statistically with greater marital stability.

Venezuela

Venezuela reports a crude divorce rate of roughly 0.7 per 1,000 population. Divorce in Venezuela is governed by the 1982 Civil Code as amended, with grounds including mutual consent (introduced in 2015 through a Supreme Tribunal ruling), abandonment, adultery, and irreconcilable differences. The Supreme Tribunal of Justice's 2015 ruling significantly liberalised the process, eliminating the previous requirement that divorces be granted only on enumerated grounds with judicial fault findings.

The country's ongoing economic crisis, which has driven roughly 7 million Venezuelans to emigrate since 2015, has had a complex impact on divorce statistics. Many separated couples cannot complete formal divorce procedures because one or both partners have left the country, and the registry data therefore undercounts actual marriage dissolutions. Catholic religious influence, while declining among younger Venezuelans, also continues to depress the formal divorce rate.

Chile

Chile legalised divorce in November 2004 with the passage of the Civil Marriage Law (Nueva Ley de Matrimonio Civil), making it one of the last countries in the Americas to do so. Before 2004, married Chilean couples could obtain only annulments, often through technical procedural loopholes that effectively functioned as divorce for those who could afford the legal fees. The country's current crude divorce rate sits at roughly 0.7 per 1,000 population.

Chilean divorce law permits divorce by mutual consent after one year of separation or unilateral divorce after three years. The country's Constitution declares the family the fundamental basis of society, and Catholic and Evangelical Christian religious influence on marriage norms remains strong. As with Ireland and Malta, the absolute rate is gradually rising as the post-legalisation generation of marriages matures, but the figure remains well below the global average.

Colombia

Colombia reports a crude divorce rate of roughly 0.7 to 0.9 per 1,000 population. Civil divorce has been legal in Colombia since 1976 for civil marriages, and was extended to Catholic religious marriages by a 1991 Constitutional Court ruling and 1992 legislation. The country has two-tier marriage law: civil marriages can be divorced by either party for cause or by mutual consent, while Catholic marriages dissolved by civil decree remain valid under canon law unless separately annulled.

As in Guatemala and several other Latin American countries, informal cohabitation is widespread in Colombia (a 2018 survey found that roughly 35 percent of adult unions were not formally registered marriages), which depresses the registry-based divorce rate by removing many separations from the formal count. Catholic religious culture remains influential, but secularisation has progressed faster in Colombia than in much of the rest of Latin America.

Mexico

Mexico reports a crude divorce rate of roughly 1.0 per 1,000 population. The country's divorce rate has been rising rapidly: official records show divorces climbing from approximately 57,000 in 2001 to over 165,000 in 2023, a near-tripling driven principally by changes in state-level no-fault divorce law. Mexico City became the first jurisdiction in Latin America to permit no-fault unilateral divorce in 2008, and most Mexican states have since adopted similar legislation.

As the formal divorce rate has risen, the formal marriage rate has fallen even faster: the share of Mexican adults aged 15 to 29 who were legally married dropped from roughly 60 percent in 2008 to under 43 percent in 2023, with most younger couples opting for unión libre (common-law cohabitation) rather than formal marriage. The combined effect is that fewer marriages are being formed, more existing marriages are being dissolved, and the registry-based divorce rate per 1,000 population is rising even as the share of Mexicans in legally registered marriages is falling.

The Thirty Countries by Crude Divorce Rate

The table below lists 30 countries with low to moderate crude divorce rates, in approximate ascending order. Rates are most recent available data per country (2018 to 2025). The Maldives (around 5.5 per 1,000) and several post-Soviet states (Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania) sit at the global high end and are not included here. India's reported rate (0.01 to 0.1) is based on NFHS survey data and state-level registry partial reporting; the wide range reflects methodological differences between data sources.

Sources: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division (World Marriage Data); Eurostat marriage and divorce statistics (2023); National Family Health Survey of India (NFHS-4 and NFHS-5); national statistical office releases.

What the Numbers Reveal

The countries with the lowest divorce rates fall into three rough categories. The first contains countries with substantial cultural or religious barriers to divorce, including the conservative Catholic countries of Latin America (Guatemala, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia), Sri Lanka, and India. The second contains countries where divorce was legally restricted or impossible until relatively recently, including Malta (legalised 2011), Chile (2004), and Ireland (1996). The third contains countries where common-law cohabitation has effectively replaced formal marriage among large parts of the population, with Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia as the clearest examples in this category.

None of these categories straightforwardly reflects marital stability. A low formal divorce rate can mask high rates of de facto separation, domestic violence, or unhappy marriages held together by social or legal pressure. Conversely, a high divorce rate often reflects a society in which divorce is legally accessible and socially permissible, not one in which marriages are inherently weaker. The most accurate generalisation from the global data is that divorce rates respond strongly to legal access and cultural permissibility, and only weakly to underlying marital satisfaction.