Early Marriage Among Women in Developing Countries

A study using data from 40 demographic and health surveys shows that a substantial proportion of women in developing countries continue to marry as adolescents.

Overall, between 20 and 50 percent of such women marry or enter a union by age 18, with between 40 and 70 percent doing so by their 20th birthday. Early marriage is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Women between ages 20 and 24 are less likely to have married by age 20 than are women aged 40-44. The differential is at least 10 percentage points in most countries, reaching 30-40 percentage points in some countries.

Education and age at first marriage are strongly linked at both the individual and the societal level. For example, a woman who has attended high school is considerably less likely to marry during adolescence, and in those countries with a higher proportion of women with secondary education, the proportion of those marrying as adolescents is lower.

The timing of the marriage or union is an important dimension of women’s reproductive behavior with far-reaching consequences, particularly for their reproductive health and social status. In many developing countries, between half and three-quarters of all first births for married women occur less than two years after entering their first union.

Thus, early marriage typically coincides with childbearing at a young age. Early pregnancy poses great health risks for a young woman, as well as for the infant, if she carries the pregnancy to term. These risks are exacerbated by poverty and inadequate access to maternal and child health services.

Moreover, those who marry at a young age likely will find motherhood the sole focus of their lives at the expense of development in other areas such as formal education and training for employment, work experience and personal growth.

Even their marriage may be jeopardized. A first marriage at an early age is associated in the long term with a higher probability of divorce and separation. In turn, marriage dissolution creates social and economic challenges for women who, as single parents, often assume full responsibility for dependent family members.

Due to concern about the negative consequences of early marriage among women, much of the ‘girl child’ discussion at the recent International Women’s Conference in Beijing focused on the problem of girls marrying at a very young age, in some cases, even younger than a country’s legal minimum.

Many women’s organizations regard early marriage as having detrimental consequences for women; therefore, advocacy groups and some national governments have responded with policy recommendations and programs to delay first marriages.

Across the developing world, the traditional patterns of early marriage for women have given way to later ages at first marriage, as the age at which women marry continues to vary widely both across and within countries.

This article will describe these differentials and trends over time and examines their association with socioeconomic development. Such information can provide insight into past and future trends in women’s age at marriage, as well as assist policymakers and service providers in planning to meet young women’s current and future educational, employment and health care needs.

We’ll begin by describing women’s current marriage patterns concerning the timing and changes in the marriage age over time. For example, how frequently do women in developing countries marry at relatively young ages and how has their age at first marriage changed over the past 20 years?

Throughout, we’ll adopt a broad definition of marriage encompassing formal or legal marriage, as well as cohabitation; hence, we’ll use the terms ‘marriage’ and ‘union’ interchangeably. Although our focus is on developing countries, when possible, we’ll include comparable data on the timing of marriage for women in three developed countries – France, Japan and the United States – in order to place the experiences of women in developing countries within a broader global context.

In seeking possible explanations for variations in the timing of marriage, we’ll examine the links between socioeconomic development and early marriage. Socioeconomic development entails numerous changes in society, ranging from industrialization, urbanization, economic growth and structural changes in the labor force to conceptual change associated with the spread of formal schooling and developments in transportation and communication technologies.

Three factors especially relevant to women’s age at first marriage – female labor force participation, women’s acquisition of formal education and urbanization.

Women’s increased access to paid employment – a typical outcome of structural changes in the labor market accompanying economic development – is thought to influence both women’s and their parent’s desires and ability to postpone marriage. According to existing theory, work experience, particularly in the formal sector, exposes women to new ideas and norms that discourage early marriage.

Source: Yemen Times – 15 February 2008