Fez — Morocco’s High Commission for Planning (HCP) has released new findings pointing to deep changes in family life, including a sharp rise in nuclear households and a notable retreat in marriage plans among single Moroccans. 

According to the institution’s 2025 National Family Survey, 51.7% of single people said they do not wish to marry, while 40.6% said they do plan to marry and 7.7% remained undecided. 

The results place marriage hesitation at the center of a broader social shift. HCP said the refusal of marriage is especially pronounced among men, with 59.8% saying they do not want to marry, compared with 31.5% of men who still intend to do so. Among women, the pattern is reversed, with 53.6% expressing the intention to marry. 

Economic reality appears to play a central role. 

HCP’s findings indicate that unemployed people are more likely to reject marriage than employed ones, reflecting how financial insecurity continues to shape personal decisions. 

The survey also found that the average age at first marriage has continued to climb, reaching 26.3 years for women and 33.3 years for men. 

Nuclear families become the norm

The report paints a picture of a Moroccan household that is becoming smaller and more centered on parents and children alone. 

In 2025, 73% of Moroccan households fell under the nuclear-family model, up from less than 61% in 1995. Over the same period, extended-family living arrangements continued to lose ground.

HCP also pointed to a rise in couples living without children at home, from 3.4% in 1995 to 9.4% in 2025, a trend linked  largely to population aging and so-called “empty nest” households. 

The institution said these shifts reflect a wider reorganization of family life, with less shared residence across generations and more distant forms of support, including financial assistance and communication from afar.

Another notable change concerns marriage patterns themselves. Marriages between relatives dropped from 29.3% in 1995 to 20.9% in 2025, while marriage within the same commune is also declining, suggesting greater social and geographic mixing.

HCP presented the survey in Rabat as a tool for better adapting public policy to contemporary family realities. The data was collected in 2025 from a probability sample of 14,000 households across Morocco using digital survey tools.