Prospective marriage and divorce data on Norwegian cohorts of two-sex marriages from 1886 until 2018

The article contains prospective data on all two-sex marriages formed in Norway between 1886 and 2018, with annual follow-up for 60 years, totaling 133 cohorts and 2 698 632 marriages. The data list the number of marriages that ended in divorce throughout each year of follow-up. The data were obtained through a special order from Statistics Norway. The data from 1981 to 2018 contain additional information about male and female ages, the number of divorces from each cohort in the total population of marriages, as well as divorces among marriages formed in urban and rural areas of the country under four marriage and remarriage constellations: first time for both spouses, first time for one and second time for the other, second time for both, and third time or more for at least one in the couple. Marriages formed within a calendar year are pooled into cohorts, and each pair was examined annually to ensure that the same two persons remained married.