The number of families with children will fall until 2030, while childless families and families made up of only one or two members will be on the rise, said a Family and Household Development Prognosis for 2014-30 on Thursday.
The forecast, which was drawn up by the Demographic Research Centre INFOSTAT, the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Comenius University and the Prognostics Institute at the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV), was aimed at analysing the character of households, families and the changes in their structure. This is the first prognosis to be conducted not only countrywide but also at a district level. The formation and character of family-based households is at present being influenced by a sizable drop in the number of new marriages over the past three decades, as well as a fall in the rate at which widowed and divorced people remarry. According to Branislav Sprocha of the Prognostics Institute, an increasing number of people of 'reproductive age' are choosing not to tie the knot despite having the opportunity to do so.
