Estonia Threatened by 'Bride Drought'
Published: 18.12.2012 15:21
Photo: Postimees/Scanpix
On the whole, there are many more women than men in the country; however, most of Estonia's 227 municipalities have significantly fewer 20- to 34-year-old women than men of the same age group, an analysis of the recently finalized 2011 census results shows.
Overall in the country, there are 600,526 males and 693,929 females. But in the 20-34 age group, the prime child-bearing years, there are 141,084 men and 134,782 women, leading Statistics Estonia to dub it a bride drought.
"Many regions will in the future be threatened with a situation in which the typical family consists of an elderly mother and her old bachelor son,“ Mihkel Servinski, chief analyst for Statistics Estonia, wrote on the agency's blog.
"The bride problem is by no means a new phenomenon in Estonia, although there has not been much talk of it lately. But as shown by the census results, the situation is definitely serious,“ he said.
Statistics Estonia published the following map of the country's gender breakdown.
There are only three municipalities, all around Tallinn, that have 84-89 men for every 100 women in the aforementioned age group. These are marked in dark blue and are Harku, Viimsi and Kiili. The light blue municipalities, of which there are 40, have 90-109 men per 100 women in the age group.
By contrast, the rest of the municipalities are all problematic, having above 110 men per 100 women. The 144 beige municipalities have 110-149 men per 100 women. And the 38 orange municipalities have 150-500 men per 100 women.
