Legal Age for Marriage

Legal Age for Marriage

Subject: Governance

Topic: Gender

Context: About 25 per cent of women aged 18-29 and 15 per cent of men aged 21-29 got married before reaching the minimum legal age of marriage, according to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted between 2019-21.

Concept:

• In India, the legal age of marriage for women is 18 and 21 for men.
• However, the government is planning to make it 21 for both men and women.
• The NFHS-5 said about two-fifths of women married before reaching the legal age in West Bengal (42 per cent), Bihar (40 per cent), and Tripura (39 per cent), and about one-third of them tied the knot before reaching the legal age of marriage in Jharkhand (35 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (33 per cent).
• The percentage of women marrying before reaching the legal minimum age of 18 is lowest in Lakshadweep (4 per cent); Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh (6 per cent each); Himachal Pradesh, Goa, and Nagaland (7 per cent each), and Kerala and Puducherry (8 per cent each).
• But the report also said that early marriage has been declining over time.
• Marriage before the legal age of 18 is 23 per cent for women age 20-24, compared with 47 per cent for women age 45-49. Similarly, for men, marriage before the legal age of 21 years has dropped from 27 per cent for men aged 45-49 to 18 per cent for men aged 25-29.
• The median age at first marriagefor women aged 20-49 slightly increased from 19 years in 2015-16 to 19.2 years in 2019-21.For men aged 25-49, the median age at first marriage slightly increased between 2015-16 and 2019-21 (from 24.5 to 24.9 years), the NFHS said.
• It was also noted that women having 12 or more years of schooling marry much later than other women. The median age at first marriage for women aged 25-49 increases from 17.1 years for women with no schooling to 22.8 years for women with 12 or more years of schooling.