25% women aged 18-29, 15% men aged 21-29 married before legal age: NFHS-5
Govt planning to make legal age of marriage 21 for both men & women
NEW DELHI: 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.
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%), Bihar (40%), and Tripura (39%), and about one-third of them tied the knot before reaching the legal age of marriage in Jharkhand (35%) and Andhra Pradesh (33%).
The percentage of marrying before the legal minimum age is 32 per cent in Assam, 28 per cent in Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, 27 per cent in Telangana, and 25 per cent each in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
The percentage of women marrying before reaching the legal minimum age of 18 is lowest in Lakshadweep (4%); Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh (6%); Himachal
Pradesh, Goa, and Nagaland (7%), and Kerala and Puducherry (8%).
The lowest proportions of men marrying below the legal age at marriage are in Lakshadweep and Chandigarh (less than 1%), Kerala (1%), Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and Nagaland (4%), Karnataka and Andaman and Nicobar Islands (5%), Himachal Pradesh and Goa (6%), and Delhi, Punjab, and Maharashtra (9%).
The median age at first marriage for women aged 20-49 slightly increased from 19 years in 2015-16 to 19.2 years in 201921. 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 with 12 or more years of schooling marry much later than other women.
The median age at first marriage for women aged 25-49 is higher among Jain women (22.7 years), Christian women (21.7 years), and Sikh women (21.2 years) than women from all other specific religions (18.7-19.7 years), the NFHS said.
Almost half of women with abortions (48 per cent) sought their abortion due to an unplanned pregnancy. 16 per cent of women with abortion had complications from the abortion.
In 2019-21, 11 per cent of women aged 15-49 have experienced a stillbirth, miscarriage, or abortion in their lifetime, compared to 12 per cent in 2015-16.
The same percentage (4 per cent each) of women aged 15-49 had a non-live birth in the five years preceding the NFHS-5 survey and in the NFHS-4 survey.
11 per cent of marriages are consanguineous, which is more common in all of the southern states except Kerala.
Teenage childbearing is higher among Muslim women aged 15-19 years (8%) than the other religious groups, the report said. The survey also found that one in nine women aged 45-49 is widowed.
The NFHS-5 survey work has been conducted in around 6.37 lakh sample households from 707 districts of the country from 28 States and 8 UTs, covering 7,24,115 women and 1,01,839 men to provide dis-aggregated estimates up to the district level.