New research has found that more married couples with children in the UK are choosing to stay together as divorce rates continue to fall.

The Marriage Foundation analysed data from the Family Resources Survey and Understanding Society Survey and found that the number of 13- to 15-year-olds not living with both natural parents has fallen in the last 13 years from 40 per cent to 36 per cent. 

Additional data over the same period from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) also shows a drop in divorce among couples married for 15 years from 31 per cent to 28 per cent. 

The Marriage Foundation said divorce rates in the UK were predicted to fall to 23 per cent within the next decade. 

The research is in line with the latest figures from ONS, which revealed a 4.9 per cent fall in divorces between 2016 and 2017, although the data also reveals a consistent decline in the number of couples marrying. 

The Marriage Foundation said the figures suggested an overall decline in family breakdown in the UK, which it said costs the taxpayer £51 billion a year, largely in benefits to support lone parent families.

It also warned that family breakdown was the single biggest predictor of teenage mental health problems.  

Harry Benson, research director of Marriage Foundation, said: 'This is the first really clear evidence that family stability has improved as a direct consequence of lower divorce rates. And, on current trends, this is likely to improve further.

'Since nine out of ten parents with teenagers who are still together are married, what happens to married parents is vastly more significant than what happens to unmarried parents.

'If family breakdown can reduce without any input whatsoever from government, imagine what could happen if the government had a clear policy to reverse the trend away from marriage and commitment.

'This is good news for couples, good news for children, and good news with which to begin 2019.'

Sir Paul Coleridge, founder and chairman of Marriage Foundation, said the statistics were also good news for the UK's family courts, which he said had been under 'unremitting strain' for the last two decades due to the caseload of broken families and a cut in resources.

'So far as couple relationships are concerned, most of the focus recently has been on minority groups. This new research is unashamedly about the overwhelming majority - the 90 per cent who marry and stay married,' he said.

'To have solid evidence that the vast majority - the marrieds - are divorcing less is truly significant so far as impact on the national picture overall is concerned. And it is obviously seriously good news for teenagers who need their parents to be together during these high stress years.'