How have the changes in our society affected marriage rates and the proportion of births outside marriage over the last twenty years? How much does government spend as a proportion of GDP, and how is this spending split between social protection, health and education? What are the recent developments in lifelong learning? The answers to these questions and to many more can be found in the 14th edition of the Eurostat yearbook, published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

Proportion of births outside marriage has doubled in the EU27 over the last twenty years

The marriage rate has decreased in the EU27, from 6.3 marriages per 1000 persons in 1990, to 5.1‰ in 1998 and 4.9‰ in 2007. The marriage rate in 2008 was below that for 1990 in all Member States except Denmark, Ireland (in 2007), Poland, Finland and Sweden. The highest marriage rates in 2008 were observed in Cyprus (7.7‰), Lithuania (7.2‰), Romania (6.9‰), Denmark and Poland (both 6.8‰), and the lowest in Slovenia (3.3‰), Bulgaria (3.6‰), Luxembourg (3.9‰) and Hungary (4.0‰).

The proportion of live births outside marriage in the EU27 has doubled, from 17.4% in 1990 to 35.1% in 2007. This proportion has increased in all Member States except Denmark, where it remained nearly stable at 46%. More than half of all births were outside marriage in 2008 in Estonia (59.0%), Sweden (54.7%), Slovenia (52.8%), France (52.6%) and Bulgaria (51.1%). The lowest shares were found in Greece (5.9%), Cyprus (8.9%), Italy (17.7%) and Poland (19.9%).

Social protection accounts for largest share of government expenditure

In the EU27 in 2008, total government expenditure was 46.8% of GDP with the highest shares in Sweden (53.0%), France (52.7%), Denmark (51.8%) and Belgium (50.0%), and the lowest in Slovakia (34.8%), Luxembourg (37.2%), Bulgaria (37.3%) and Lithuania (37.4%).

The largest part of government expenditure in 2008 in the EU27 was allocated to social protection (18.2% of GDP). This was the case in all Member States, the share ranging from 9.4% of GDP in Latvia, 9.8% in Slovakia and 9.9% in Cyprus to 22.4% in Denmark, 21.8% in France and 21.5% in Sweden.

Government expenditure on health ranged from 3.0% of GDP in Cyprus and 4.2% in Romania to 7.8% in Denmark, Ireland and France. Expenditure on education3 varied from 3.1% in Greece and 3.3% in Slovakia to 7.8% in Cyprus and 7.0% in Denmark.

Lifelong learning more frequent in Nordic Member States

In 2009 in the EU27, 9.3% of persons aged 25 to 64 participated in lifelong learning4, which means that they received education and training in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. The share was 8.5% in 2003. Significant differences in this share are observed between Member States. In 2009, the highest shares were found in Denmark (31.6%), Sweden (22.2%), Finland (22.1%), the United Kingdom (20.1%) and the Netherlands (17.0%), and the lowest in Bulgaria (1.4%), Romania (1.5%) and Hungary (2.7%).

In the EU27, the share of those taking part in lifelong learning was 10.2% for women and 8.5% for men in 2009. The share for women was higher than for men in all Member States, except Germany and Cyprus.