Survey: 46% of girls marry below legal age [India]

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Survey: 46 per cent girls below legal age forced to marry [in India]

19 Dec 2007

The Times of India

Mumbai

 

About 46 per cent of girls are forced to marry even before

they attain legal marriageable age, according to a survey

conducted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

 

Most of them are married by the time they turn 17, National

Family Health Survey-III report said.

 

As a result of early marriage, 16 per cent of women are

forced to bear a child in the age group 15-19 years, the

report added.

 

Also, if all women were to have only the number of children

they wanted, the total fertility rate would be 1.9 instead of

2.7, it said.

 

The survey is based on interviews of 1,24,285 women in the

age group 15-19 years and 74,369 men in 29 districts

nationwide.

 

While most women get married at 17 years of age, men

entered wedlock at 23, which is better as compared to

women, the survey found, adding only 27 per cent men got

married before attaining legal age.

 

Early marriages also lead to teenage pregnancies. Chances

of young women in rural areas to become mothers are more

than twice as compared to young women in urban areas, it

stated.

 

In states of Jharkhand, West Bengal and Bihar, at least one

out of four teenaged women has begun child bearing, the

report said.

 

As mentioned in the survey, the fertility level for women in

India is 2.7 per cent. In states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh,

fertility rate is much higher where a woman would have

four children in her life.

 

The survey also showed that fertility rate in rural areas is

three per cent which is much higher than urban areas where

the rate is 2.1 children per woman.

 

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