Tunisian men now marry at 35 on average as economic pressure and shifting values push back the wedding age

Tunisia is marrying later and less often, with official data and demographers pointing to a convergence of economic hardship, prolonged education, and changing social values as the forces behind one of the most significant demographic shifts the country has recorded since independence.

The Institut national de la statistique (INS) recorded 70,942 marriages in 2024, down from 78,115 in 2023 — a fall of roughly 9 percent in a single year. The 2024 figure is less than two thirds of the 110,000 unions registered in 2014, according to data cited by multiple Tunisian media reports drawing on INS bulletins.

The average age at first marriage has climbed in parallel. The 2024 general population and housing census places the mean age for men at 35.3 years, up from 27.1 years in 1966 and 33 years in 2014. For women, the figure stands at 28.9 years, compared with 20.9 years in 1966. Mohamed Ali Ben Zina, a demographer and lecturer at the University of Tunis, told a Ministry of the Family scientific colloquium in May 2026 that 80 percent of Tunisians aged between 15 and 34 are unmarried — a figure drawn from the latest INS statistics.

The economic wall

Demographers and sociologists are broadly agreed on the primary driver: the cost of starting a household in an economy where youth unemployment stood at 37.5 percent in the first quarter of 2026, according to INS data published in May. Graduate unemployment reached 24.2 percent in the same period, with the rate for women with degrees hitting 32 percent against 14.2 percent for men.

The financial barrier is concrete. Lotfi Riahi, president of the Tunisian Consumer Guidance Organisation, told Mosaïque FM in April 2025 that the minimum cost of a Tunisian wedding — covering jewellery, furniture, appliances, traditional rituals and venue hire — now exceeds 50,000 dinars, excluding the wedding dress and honeymoon. The venue alone can cost between 8,000 and 15,000 dinars.

Ben Zina attributed the postponement primarily to difficulties accessing employment and the absence of professional stability, telling the May 2026 colloquium that the delay has direct consequences for the birth rate and for the pace of demographic ageing.

A deeper social shift

Sociologist Mamdouh Ezzeddine, speaking on Express FM in December 2025, argued that the trend reflects something beyond pure economics. Since 2011, he said, the number of marriage contracts has been in continuous decline. He identified three converging forces: the deferral of marriage, the individualisation of family choices, and what he described as the increasing perception of marriage as a transaction based on material interest rather than a shared life project.

Demographer Hassen Kassar, speaking on Express FM in May 2026, linked later marriage directly to the wider restructuring of women's life paths: mass entry into higher education, greater labour market participation, and the growing priority given to professional trajectories. These shifts, he said, have made the large family model progressively marginal. He added that even financial incentive policies — family allowances, housing support — are unlikely on their own to reverse the trend.

The demographic consequence

The fall in marriages is feeding directly into a fall in births. The INS recorded 133,322 live births in 2024, down from 147,242 in 2023, a decline of nearly 10 percent. The fertility rate stood at 1.7 children per woman in 2024, well below the replacement level of 2.1.

Tunisia's overall population growth rate for the decade 2014 to 2024 was 0.87 percent — the weakest since independence — and the share of people aged 60 and over has reached 16 percent, a figure the INS projects will rise to around 20 percent by 2050.

Kassar described Tunisia as having entered an advanced phase of demographic transition, with major economic and social consequences ahead: pressure on the pension system, a shrinking working-age base, and the erosion of the intergenerational solidarity model that has historically substituted for formal social protection.

The trend is not uniform across the country. Earlier INS data showed unmarried rates were highest in interior governorates — Kasserine, Sidi Bouzid and Kébili — where economic conditions are most constrained, suggesting that the delay in marriage deepens existing regional inequality rather than cutting across it evenly.