MARITAL STATUS STATISTICS

1. INTRODUCTION

MARITAL status is the categorisation of individuals in a population into the following groupings: married, has never been married, cohabiting, separated, divorced or widowed. According to the 2013-14 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS), the term “married” refers to legal or formal unions, while “living together” designates an informal union in which a man and a woman live together, even if a formal civil, religious, or traditional ceremony has not occurred. Within the context of the ZDHS, marriage includes living with partners in a consensual but informal union. Respondents who are widowed, divorced, or separated are referred to as “ever married.” A person’s marital status and changes in marital status are important for the government to determine marriage trends and forecast future needs of programmes that have spousal benefits implications in the country. This article, therefore, focuses on marital status statistics including age at first marriage and child marriage.

2. STATISTICS ON MARITAL STATUS Registration of marriages is regulated under the Marriages Act Chapter 50 of the Laws of Zambia. Only statutory marriages are regulated under the Marriages Act and therefore registered with the office of the Registrar General. It has to be noted that customary marriages are not regulated under the Marriages Act. Marriages and divorces are, ideally, supposed to be captured in the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) system but not all are captured for a number of reasons. The 2010 Census of Population and Housing Key Findings show that at national level, of the population aged 15 years and older, 53.0 percent were married, 33.7 percent had never been married, 5.5 percent were widowed, 2.8 percent divorced, 2.8 percent cohabiting, and 2.1 percent separated (CSO, 2012:2). In terms of current marital status by age and sex, the 2013-14 ZDHS shows that 60 percent of women and 52 percent of men aged 15-49 were married. A higher proportion of men (44 percent) than women (28 percent) had never been married. In combination, divorce, separation, and widowhood are three times as high among women as among men (12 percent and 4 percent, respectively). The results further show that teenage marriage is more common among girls aged 15-19 (17 percent) than boys (1 percent). The proportion of married women increases rapidly from 17 percent among women age 15-19 and peaks at age 30-34 at 79 percent. The proportion married at age 3539 declines with age to 72 percent at age 45-49. The lower percentage of women in union at age 45-49 can be attributed to widowhood, which affects 13 percent in this age group. Among men, the percentage married also rapidly increases from 22 percent at age 20-24 to 91 percent at age 45-49. The proportion of those never married decreases sharply with age for both women and men. Among women, the proportion decreases from 81 percent at age 15-19 to 1 percent at age 45-49; among men, it decreases from 99 percent at age 1519 to 2 percent at age 45-49 (ZDHS, 2013-14).

3. POLYGAMY Marital unions are basically of two types i.e. those that are monogamous and those that are polygamous. Monogamous unions are when one is married to or is in a sexual relationship with one person at a time. Marital monogamy, therefore, refers to marriage of two people only. Polygamy is the practice of having more than one wife. The extent of polygamy was measured in the 2013-14 ZDHS by asking all married female respondents whether their husband or partner had other wives and, if so, how many. Currently, married men were also asked whether or not they had one or more wives or partners with whom they were living. The data showed that the majority of Zambian women and men were in monogamous unions. Twelve percent of married women and 7 percent of married men were in polygamous unions. Polygamy was more common in rural areas, with 17 percent of women and 10 percent of men reporting being in a polygamous union. According to the 2013-14 ZDHS, among provinces, polygamy was highest in Southern (26 percent of women and 16 percent of men). Lusaka had the lowest percentages of polygamy with 3 percent of women and 2 percent men in such a union. The findings further showed that education was negatively associated with polygamy. These unions are common among men and women with primary education or less. The proportion of women in polygamous union decreases from 18 percent among those with no education to 3 percent among those with more than secondary education. One interesting statistic is that the proportion of men in a polygamous union decreases from 9 percent among men with no education and primary education to 1 percent among men with more than secondary education. The data also show that the percentage of women and men in a polygamous union decreases with wealth from 17 percent and 8 percent, respectively, among respondents in the lowest wealth quintile to 3 percent and 1 percent among women and men, respectively, in the highest wealth quintile. The proportion of currently married women in a polygamous union declined from 15 percent in 2007 to 12 percent in 2013-14. Comparable data for men show a smaller decrease for the same period (ZDHS, 2013-14). 4. Age at First Marriage $ge at first marriage is defined as the age at which the respondent begins living with her or his first spouse/partner. Women who marry early, on average, are more likely to have their first child at a young age give birth to more children overall, contribute to higher fertility rates, and experience possible maternal health implications. Marriage occurs relatively early in Zambia; among women aged 25-49, 45 percent marry by age 18, and 65 percent marry by age 20. The median age at first marriage among women aged 25-49 is 18.4 years. The proportion of women married by age 15 declines from 13 percent among those aged 45-49 to 2 percent among those aged 15-19 indicating some evidence of a rising age at first marriage. The average age (using the median at first marriage for women aged 20-49, women aged 25-49, and men aged 25-59 by background characteristics. Urban women aged 25-49 marry one and a half years later than rural women. A comparison by province shows that there is a three-year difference in average median age at first marriage between women aged 25-49 in Western (20.5) compared with those in Eastern (17.5 years). A positive association was seen between average (median) age at first marriage and level of education. Women with a secondary education marry nearly three years later than those with no education (20.0 years and 17.3 years, respectively). In addition, women from the highest wealth quintile marry about three years later than those from the other quintiles. Education and wealth clearly are delaying factors for age at first marriage. A similar pattern is observed for men aged - . The findings further show that men in Western Province tend to marry nearly two years later than men in Eastern Province, 24.3 and 22.7 years, respectively. As is the case of women, a positive association is seen between median age at first marriage and level of education in men. Men with a secondary education marry nearly two years later than those with no education. The median age at first marriage among women aged 25-49 over the last nearly two decades has increased by less than one year from 17.7 years in 1996 to 18.4 years in 2013-14. In the case of men aged 25-59, the median age at first marriage has only marginally increased from 23.5 years to 23.9 years over the same period.

5. CHILD MARRIAGE Child marriage is the marriage of a person below the age of 18. Child marriage and teenage pregnancy are major public health issues because they are closely associated with higher morbidity and mortality for both the mother and child. Childbearing during the teenage years also frequently has adverse social consequences, particularly on female educational attainment, because women who become mothers in their teens are more likely not to continue with their education in spite of the availability of the Government’s reentry policy. According to the Policy Brief on Child Marriage in Zambia (2017) by the Population Council, UNFPA, and Government of the Republic of Zambia, child marriage was found to be widely practised across the studied sites i.e. Katete, Lusaka, Luwingu, Mufulira, Mwinilunga and Senanga. The study aimed at examining the underlying social, cultural and economic factors that underpin the practice to better understand its origins, dynamics and implications for boys, girls, their families and communities. The report states that while both globally and in Zambia, girls appear to be statistically at greater risk than boys of marriage the study found significant numbers of boy husbands and fathers.

6. USES OF MARITAL STATISTICS 6.1 Government and NonGovernmental Organisations (NGOs) can use marital status statistics to determine what kind of social services may be required in a particular community. Additionally, health care and community services providers may use these statistics to understand the percentage of old people in a community that have no spousal support that may need additional care. 6.2 Population estimates by legal marital status provide estimates of the population that are single, married, widowed and divorced. Population estimates by marital status are used for producing marriage and divorce rates, as inputs to equalities frameworks, and for analysis of household composition for use in policy planning and other research such as analysis of breast feeding trends (NRS, 2011).

7. CONCLUSION Marital status statistics are collected in the context of determining social characteristics in the country through the Census of Population and Housing and the Zambia Demographic and Health Survey. Marital status is also often assessed in public health and social surveys because it is associated with various health outcomes. It has been shown a number of studies that girls appear to be statistically at greater risk than boys of marriage. Social characteristics such as marital status can contribute towards formulation of appropriate social and economic policies by the government.