A recent report in The Economist shows that, in the UK at least, domestic violence is dropping sharply while violence by strangers is rising equally sharply. In fact crime, or its perception of it, is one of the key issues in the current UK election campaign. And for many people there, rightly it seems, there is a general fear of being mugged, attacked, raped or beaten by strangers as one goes about in the streets of one’s hometown or village.

It is also good to know that these sorts of trends can be reversed, as we are about to embark here on new legislation which may help in this regard. But why is domestic violence really declining? The UK is obviously years ahead of us. The police there have long stopped the tea and sympathy approach, and we know that here the attitude of the police, who used to ignore such incidents, has only recently changed and improved, although one cannot say this is true of all police officers.

Legislation has been in place in the UK for a while too and there are plans to make it even tougher. The Economist quotes “From July, the courts will be able to impose restraining orders on abusers even when they are acquitted of assaults”.

So much closer attention from the forces of law and order is one factor which may have helped the decline in domestic violence. However the biggest explanation comes from changes in British society, which apparently have been happening over the last 30 years and which have only kicked in very lately here.

Basically, in the UK, fewer and fewer people are getting married in the first place. Jill Radford, who carried out some research for the University of Teeside, said the population in shelters for battered wives or women seems to be aging slightly, implying perhaps that the young are better able to take care of themselves, are less likely to be married and therefore find it easier to take off when these sort of problems start.

However, according to the interpretation of The Economist no less, the single most important reason why there has been such a remarkable decline in domestic violence is quite simply that “there are fewer wives to beat”.

The number of married couples fell by almost a million alone, just from the years from 1991 to 2001(according to the Census). But, of course, people are still just as likely to cohabit and form long term relationships, and in fact the number of cohabiting couples grew by roughly the same amount in the same period, from 1.1 million to two million.

Couples are getting married when they are older and older, and usually not with the first person they live with. Women are almost three years older when they get married than they were 10 years ago. And, most importantly of all, they are very likely to live with their partners before they marry.

This again is crucial because apparently “in about half of all cases domestic violence takes longer than a year to emerge”. Clearly, if you have lived with the man first, there is more of a chance you will know of certain problems before, and it’s obviously easy to leave a relationship early on than after expensive weddings, family pressure, babies and home loans set in to make breaking up harder.

The fact that domestic violence is declining and that younger women seem to be able to walk away from these problems more easily than their older married counterparts because they are less likely to be married, becomes even clearer when you consider another factor. It is in fact women under 30 who are mostly in danger because young men are more violent than middle aged men. Apparently, according to Emma Wilkinson of Women’s Aid, abuse often starts or gets worse when the partner or wife is pregnant, partly because the man loses some of the control he may have felt he had previously.

Yet, even here, social changes are helping. Women are not only marrying less often and when they are older. They are having babies when they are older too! In the 10 years before 2003 the number of births to women younger than 30 dropped by a remarkable 27 per cent. So in terms of domestic violence incidence at least, women are having babies older at a time when the partners are less likely to be violent.

So there we are. Social changes in a country at least 20 years ahead of us have brought about one positive change. It is not a change you are likely to hear much about here. Everything about countries which have more cohabitation, less marriage and divorce is always presented as totally negative.

As The Economist itself concluded, “The waning of marriage and stable relationships among the young has been blamed for a variety of social ills, from single motherhood to the irresponsible behaviour of young men. But non commitment does have its advantages”.