Consensual Unions Overtake Formal Marriages in Brazil, IBGE Finds

Overview

• In 2022, consensual partnerships accounted for 38.9% of conjugal arrangements, edging past civil-and-religious marriages at 37.9%, with civil-only at 20.5% and religious-only at 2.6%.
• More than half of Brazilians aged 10 or older lived with a partner (51.3%), while the share previously in a union rose to 18.6% and those who never lived in a union fell to 30.1%.
• Same-sex unions reached 480,000 households, an eightfold increase since 2010 (+728%), with most recorded as consensual.
• Household composition shifted as couples without children nearly doubled since 2000 (13% to 24.1%) and women became heads in 48% of families.
• The census identified 34,200 people aged 10–14 living in unions, a self-reported figure IBGE says should trigger attention from child-protection and legal authorities.