§ Mr. Ridleyasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will give details of the principal official and private statistical sources and studies known to him which provide information about the financial and other circumstances of divorcees.
Mr. DeakinThe demographic characteristics of divorced persons such as sex, age, duration of marriage and number of dependent children are published regularly in OPCS monitors—series FM2—and in the annual "Marriage and Divorce Statistics". Additional information appears in the study "Changing patterns of family formation and dissolution in England and Wales, 1964–76" published 893W by HMSO on 29 March 1979. The 1971 census of population gives statistics of the socio economic characteristics of divorced persons—for example, household composition tables parts I to IV. The report of the Finer committee on one-parent families—Cmnd 5629 HMSO 1974—gives some information relating to divorced women, and some up-dated statistics for 1976 published in an article in the September 1978 issue of "Population Trends."