Gender scripts and age at marriage in India

Research on marriage in developing countries has been somewhat narrow in scope because of both conceptual and data limitations. While the feminist literature recognizes marriage as a key institutional site for the production and reproduction of gender hierarchies, little is known about the processes through which this relationship operates. This article uses data from the newly collected India Human Development Survey 2005 for 27,365 ever-married women aged 25–49 to explore ways in which different dimensions of gender in Indian society shape the decisions regarding age at marriage. We explore the impact of three dimensions of gender: (1) economic factors, such as availability of wage employment, dowry expectations, and wedding expenses; (2) indicators of familial empowerment, such as women’s role in household decision making and access to and control over resources; and (3) markers of gender performance, such as observance of purdah and male-female separation in the household. Results from hierarchical linear models confirm the importance of markers of gender performance but fail to demonstrate a large role for economic factors and familial empowerment.     

Economic analysis of age at first marriage

A subject of great interest to demographers is to relate the timing of demographic events to individual characteristics and environmental variables. Static models of marriage tend to give corner solutions, the choice of marriage or remaining single. This article develops an economic model of marriage which gives interior solutions to the optimum age at first marriage and which does not include an explicit argument about the age at marriage in the utility function. In theoretical analysis, life cycle model is modified to capture different aspects of the decision of when to get married. Results from empirical analysis support implications derived from the theoretical analysis.     

Trends in age at marriage in postwar Ireland

Age at marriage in the Republic of Ireland has declined substantially from the very high level that prevailed in 1946. Between 1946 and 1969 the median age of grooms fell from 32 to 26 and of brides from 27 to 24. To some extent this is a reflection of the declining importance of the rural population but to a much greater extent it is due to the falling age at marriage among all sections of the population. Simultaneous with the decline in age at marriage, the frequency distributions of brides' and grooms' ages have become both more skewed and more peaked. Thus earlier marriage has also meant greater uniformity in age at marriage, but the phenomenon of first marriage at a fairly advanced age persists. There has been a marked trend towards greater equality between husbands' and wives' ages over the postwar period: the proportion of marriages in which there was less than five years' gap between the ages of the bride and groom rose from 49 percent in 1946 to 71 percent in 1969. The percentage of marriages in which the groom was ten or more years older than the bride has fallen from 22 to seven percent. The evidence suggests that the “marriage market” became less favourable to males (especially older males) over the period and that part of the narrowing in the gap in relative age of brides and grooms has been due to the greater willingness of younger males to marry. It also seems that changes in the age structure of the unmarried population has had an impact on the age distribution of grooms.     

A refined estimator of measures of location of the age at first marriage

Because of bias of unknown sign and extent introduced by age misreporting when calculating the singulate mean age of marriage in the usual manner, Van de Walle has suggested a fairly robust estimator based on stable population structure. Unfortunately not much is known about the properties of this estimator. Various demographers have argued informally that it indeed estimates the SMAM; others feel that it instead estimates the mean age of marriage in a cohort, the mean age of marriage in the stable population, or the singulate median age of marriage. In this paper the properties of this estimator are examined. Further, extensions of the Van de Walle estimator based on regression are shown to be significantly superior to the estimator alone.     

Explaining cross-cultural variations in age at marriage and proportions never marrying

Abstract According to censuses taken around 1960, the distinction between the 'European' pattern of late marriage and high proportions never married and the 'traditional' pattern of early and universal marriage remains generally valid for female populations in spite of trends toward convergence in the past few decades. Among male populations, however, the regional overlap is great. Variations in the timing and quantity of nuptiality in 57 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the English-speaking nations overseas are explained on the basis of variables measuring the desirability and feasibility of marriage. The conclusion is that marriage is becoming more feasible in the wealthier nations of the West and less feasible in many developing non-Western nations. Social and economic penalties of non-marriage are stronger in non-Western societies than in the West, and stronger for women than for men.     

Schooling,marriage, and age at first birth in Madagascar

The low school attainment, early marriage, and low age at first birth of females are major policy concerns in less developed countries. This study jointly estimated the determinants of educational attainment, marriage age, and age at first birth among females aged 12–25 in Madagascar, explicitly accounting for the endogeneities that arose from modelling these related outcomes simultaneously. An additional year of schooling results in a delay to marriage of 1.5?years and marrying 1?year later delays age at first birth by 0.5?years. Parents’ education and wealth also have important effects on schooling, marriage, and age at first birth, with a woman's first birth being delayed by 0.75?years if her mother had 4 additional years of schooling. Overall, our results provide rigorous evidence for the critical role of education—both individual women's own and that of their parents—in delaying the marriage and fertility of young women.     

Twentieth-century cohort marriage and divorce in England and Wales

Summary Marital status life tables, which follow a real or synthetic birth cohort through life and the marital statuses of 'never married', 'presently married', 'widowed', and 'divorced', reflect observed marriage, divorce and mortality behaviour and provide a detailed record of a cohort's experience. The present paper analyses such tables for cohorts of men and women born in England and Wales between 1900 and 1945. The results show that the later cohorts deviate substantially from the 'European pattern' of late marriage and high proportions never marrying, and that a dramatic rise in divorce has taken place, so that among the later cohorts one marriage out of four ends in divorce.     

Aspects of recent trends in marriage in England and Wales

The purpose of this paper is to investigate recent trends in marriage habits in England and Wales. Special interest has been attached-throughout to comparing the course of developments for the two sexes. The investigation was originally begun because it was noticed that developments in male and female marriage-rates had been very different in the past half-century.     

Changes in fertility rates and family size in response to changes in age at marriage, the trend away from arranged marriages, and increasing urbanization

Abstract Demographers have proposed a long list of factors that help explain why population growth and fertility rates respond to rising levels of urbanization, economic growth and national development.(2) Two of the many suggested influences will be investigated in the present paper with regard to urban Hong Kong.     

Economic opportunities,marriage squeezes and the propensity to marry: An economic analysis of period marriage rates in England and Wales

An economic model of the decision to marry has been developed by Gary Becker and is now part of the ‘new home economics’. From it one can deduce that the propensity to marry is a function of the relative earning capacities of men and women, the relative scarcity of unmarried persons of the opposite sex and real income. The effects of changes in these variables on the annual first marriage rates of men aged 16–19, 20–24 and 25–29 and women aged 16–19 and 20–24 respectively are estimated over the post-war period. It is found that women's earning capacity relative to men's has a particularly strong negative effect on marriage rates, and that the decline in first marriage rates during the 1970s was primarily attributable to the growing economic opportunities for women. As demographic studies have suggested, the relative numbers of bachelors and spinsters of particular ages (‘marriage squeezes’) also have a significant impact, and there is evidence of substitution in the ages of marriage partners in response to such ‘squeezes’. The income elasticity of marriage is only found to be significant among men below age 25 and women below age 20, and it increases as we move down the age distribution. This suggests the ‘liquidity constraints’ influence the timing of marriage among young people. In sum, this economic model is able to account for over 90 per cent of the post-war variation in young persons' marriage rates.     

Timing effects on first marriage: twentieth-century experience in England and Wales and the USA

Recent substantial declines in first marriage in Western countries have been accompanied by increases in the average age at first marriage. Since the period proportion ever marrying, PEM, is sensitive to cohort tempo changes, the recent fall in the PEM may simply reflect cohort delays in marriage. The importance of timing factors is examined in the light of twentieth-century experience of first marriage in England and Wales and the USA. Using a variant of the Timing Index developed in research on fertility, we measure cohort timing effects for marriage and calculate an adjusted PEM. After examining twentieth-century trends in nuptiality for men and women, we find substantial tempo effects on the period PEM. Adjusted PEM values show a real decline in marriage for cohorts, but that decline is considerably smaller than the one shown by the unadjusted figures. This is especially true for England and Wales, where the decline in marriage was much greater.     

Patterns underlying fertility schedules: A decomposition by both age and marriage duration

Summary Model fertility schedules based on the proportions married and the age pattern of marital fertility are unsatisfactory to the extent that marital fertility does not depend on age alone but also on other factors. Most notably, models based just on age fail to allow for differences between populations in their composition by marriage duration. Examination of the major series of fertility rates specific by both age and duration of marriage (Sweden 1911-70, England and Wales, 1941-70) reveals striking underlying regularities. The marital fertility rates observed at any given point in time can be factored into three independent components - an overall level, a vector of age effects common to all marriage durations and a vector of duration effects common to all age groups. A simple product of these three components is shown to approximate the data very closely over the entire series, despite major changes in the aggregate levels of fertility and nuptiality during the periods concerned. Not only are the data tightly structured, conforming very closely to this simple multiplicative model, but the vectors of age and duration effects themselves are shown to exhibit clear and meaningful regularities.     

The impact of welfare reform on marriage and divorce

The goal of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was to end needy parents' dependence on governmental benefits, in part by promoting marriage. The prereform welfare system was widely believed to discourage marriage because it provided benefits primarily to single mothers. However, welfare reform may have actually decreased the incentives to be married by giving women greater financial independence via the program's new emphasis on work. This article uses vital statistics data on marriages and divorces during 1989-2000 to examine the role of welfare reform (state waivers and implementation of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) and other state-level variables on flows into and out of marriage. The results indicate that welfare reform has led to fewer new divorces and fewer new marriages, although the latter result is sensitive to specification and the choice of data.     

Age at marriage and timing of the first birth

Summary An attempt has been made to measure the effect of age at marriage of brides on the timing of the first birth. In Australian vital statistics, first nuptial confinements have been tabulated by age of mothers and by single years of marriage duration in single months for the first two years and by single years for all other durations since 1916. A simple technique has been used to link such data with marriage cohorts. The study briefly reviews the prevailing patterns of the timing of first births by mothers' age at marriage and changes in this pattern since the marriages of the 1925/9 period. The analysis shows that after a period of relative stability of family formation patterns in the 1950s and early 1960s, women married in the late 1960s started postponing the first birth beyond the first two years of marriage. It is suggested that a fraction of the decline in total births recorded in Australia since 1972 can be attributed to the postponement of first nuptial confinements by women married in the late 1960s and early 1970s.     

Continuity and changes in attitudes toward marriage in contemporary Taiwan

Journal of Population Research - Research on marriage values bears crucial policy implications in a low-fertility context where obstacles to marriage are indicative of fertility barriers,...     

The effects of demographic factors,family background,and early job achievement on age at marriage

National data for ever-married men aged 20 to 65 in March 1973 are utilized to estimate least squares and log-linear structural equation models of age at marriage. We demonstrate that most characteristics of family background (including both the family structure and its socioeconomic standing) are irrelevant in their effect on age at marriage. Intercohort trends are not explicable with reference to the changing socioeconomic, ethnic, or nativity compositions of the cohorts. Regional differences in age at marriage have persisted over the years in only slightly diminished form and cannot be explained by reference to the nativity, ethnic, or socioeconomic compositions of the regions. Early job status relates only weakly to age at marriage. Only those activities that are time-consuming or otherwise disruptive of the smooth operation of normal life-cycle processes during the transition from adolescence to adulthood (such as college attendance and service in the military) seriously affect the age at which a man marries.     

The impact of international migration upon the timing of marriage and childbearing

Experiences of 1500 native-born Australians and 1000 foreign-born immigrants to Australia, surveyed in Melbourne in 1971, reveal that immigration delayed marriage for migrants arriving between age 15 and marriage, and delayed first, second, third and fourth births for immigrants arriving during each birth interval. This migration effect was clearly finite in its influence, affecting only proximate vital events rather than persisting through several successive events. The temporary nature of the migration effect highlights the adaptability of international migrants.