Fewer Qataris are getting married and those who do tie the knot tend to divorce more than they did a decade ago, a report issued by the Qatar Statistics Authority and the Supreme Judiciary Council has found.

Reasons for this decline include higher levels of education amongst the female Qatari population as well as increased access to the workforce, the report stated.

The high cost of weddings also plays a factor, it said.

The marriage rate per 1,000 Qataris fell from a high in 2006 of 35 males and 32 females to a low in 2010 of 24 males and 23 females getting married.

Though the divorce rate among nationals has fluctuated in the past 10 years, it still showed an overall increase from 2001 to 2010 from 9 to 11 for males and 7.8 to 9.5 in females for every 1,000 Qataris.

Other findings of the report include:

• Most Qatari men – 93.9 percent – have only one wife. Those who have another wife constituted 5.5 percent whereas those with up to three wives did not exceed .5 percent.

• Nearly half of all Qataris are married to their first or second cousins, a rate that remains high despite health campaigns warning of the risks of consanguineous marriages.

Read the full report below.

Thoughts?