Couples without children on rise in New Zealand

Couples without children are making up a growing proportion of New Zealand's 1.1 million families, the government statistics agency announced Tuesday.
The trend had been rising since 1991, and since 2006, the rise in the number of couple without children was almost double that of couples with children, according to Statistics New Zealand.
"Couples without children make up just over 40 percent of all family types, up from 35 percent in 1991," census customer focus manager Gareth Meech said in a statement.
"Couples with children are still the most common family type, but the proportion of these families continues to fall."
One-parent families made up around 18 percent of families, similar to the figure in 2006.
Of the 1.5 million households in New Zealand, two-thirds had one family, and just over 3 percent had two or more families.
Around one in four households were one-person households and the average New Zealand household size was 2.7 people.