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Marriages and Divorces 2008

South Africa, 2008
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Reference ID
zaf-statssa-md-2008-v1
Producer(s)
Statistics South Africa
Collections
Civil Registration Data
Metadata
Documentation in PDF DDI/XML JSON
Created on
May 08, 2014
Last modified
Aug 31, 2022
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  • Identification
  • Version
  • Scope
  • Coverage
  • Producers and sponsors
  • Data collection
  • Data appraisal
  • access_policy
  • Disclaimer and copyrights
  • Metadata production

    • Identification

    Survey ID number
    zaf-statssa-md-2008-v1
    Title
    Marriages and Divorces 2008
    Country
    Name Country code
    South Africa zaf
    Study type
    Administrative Data
    Abstract
    The data in this dataset is based on annual marriage and divorce data from administrative records of registration systems. The marriage data currently cover civil marriages that are administrated by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) through the Marriage Act, 1961 (Act No. 25 of 1961). The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development (DJCD) is mandated through the Divorce Act, 1979 (Act No. 70 of 1979) to deal with matters of dissolution of civil marriages. Data on divorces granted (from civil marriages) are obtained from DJCD, through its divorce courts. Although the marriage and divorce data were collected in the same year, they are not linked to each other. Marriages are civil marriages that were recorded in 2006. Divorces are the divorce applications which were granted in 2008.
    Kind of Data
    Administrative records
    Unit of Analysis
    Individuals

    Version

    Version Description
    v1: Edited, anonymised dataset for licensed distribution
    Version Date
    2010
    Version Notes
    Version 1 of the Marriages and Divorces 2008 dataset was dowmloaded from the Statistics South Africa website on the 16th of April 2014

    Scope

    Notes

    Marriage data covers province of registration, date and type of marriage (religious or civil) and age (and age difference) and status (e.g. single/widow/divorcee) of marital couple.
    Divorce data includes individual level data: Age, gender and population group, status, and occupation and number of children. Data is also collected on the marriage (date, number, type and duration, and matrimonial property system) and the divorce (date of separation and date of divorce).

    Coverage

    Geographic Coverage
    The data has national coverage.
    Geographic Unit
    The lowest level of geographic aggregation covered by the data is province
    Universe
    The data covers all civil marriages that were recoreded by the Department of Home Affairs and all divorce applications that were granted by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development in 2007 in South Africa.

    Producers and sponsors

    Primary investigators
    Name
    Statistics South Africa
    Producers
    Name Affiliation Role
    Department of Home Affairs Government of South Africa Data producers
    Department of Justice and Constitutional Development Government of South Africa Data producers

    Data collection

    Dates of Data Collection
    Start End
    2008-01-01 2008-12-31
    Data Collection Mode
    • Other
    Data Collection Notes
    The marriage data is provided to Statistics South Africa by the South African Department of Home Affairs (DHA) from their marriage registration forms.

    The divorce data is obtained by Statistic South Africa from the South African Department of Justice and Constitutional Development from administrative records on divorces granted for civil marriages by its divorce courts.

    Data appraisal

    Data Appraisal
    Geography is problematic in this dataset as not all the data files have geographic data. The Civil Marriages and Civil Unions data files include a Province of Registration variable but the Customary Marriages data file does not. There is also no geographical data in the Divorces file. As this data file includes divorce data from only a subset of divorce courts, this lack of geographical information compromises its usability.

    access_policy

    Access authority
    Name Affiliation URL Email
    DataFirst University of Cape Town support@data1st.org
    Access conditions
    Public access data for use under a Creative Commons CC-BY (Attribution-only) License
    Citation requirements
    Statistics South Africa. Marriages and Divorces 2008 [dataset]. Version 1. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa [producer], 2010. Cape Town: DataFirst [distributor], 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25828/6fwc-qa07

    Disclaimer and copyrights

    Copyright
    Copyright 2008, Statistics South Africa

    Metadata production

    DDI Document ID
    ddi-zaf-datafirst-md-2008-v1
    Producers
    Name Affiliation Role
    DataFirst University of Cape Town Metadata producer
    Date of Metadata Production
    2022-09-01

    Metadata version

    DDI Document version
    Version 4
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