Marital Age and Fertility Consequences among Rural and Urban Women
Main Article Content
Abstract
Background: In Bangladesh, marriage has been nearly universal. The legal age of marriage in Bangladesh is 18 for girls and 21 for boys. However, about two-thirds of the women aged 20-24 were married before age 18. Despite some successes, the society is still facing the practices of early marriage severely. Therefore, new policy perspectives, new programs and new dimension of study are needed to know the real facts regarding early marriage and take possible strategies and actions to way forward.
Materials and Methods: It was a cross sectional comparative study conducted in a rural community of Habashpur Union, Pangsha Upazilla, Rajbari and urban community of AGB colony, Motijheel, Dhaka. A total of 384 participants took part in the study, 251 from rural setting and 133 from urban setting.
Results: The mean age of the urban respondents was 27.17 (±5.89) years and that of the rural respondents was 29.37 (±6.62) years. At the time of marriage mean age of the respondent in urban group was 19.71 (±1.995) years and in rural group the mean age was 15.14 ((±1.214) years. This difference was statistically significant in favor of urban respondents. More than 90% respondents in rural group got married before 18 years of age while opposite phenomenon is noted in urban group. Among the marital age subgroup analyses statistical significant differences were noted. The differences were statistically more significant between the urban and rural groups.
Conclusion: Logistic regression analysis showed that husbands and their wife’s education, religion and monthly family income of the respondents before marriage were significantly associated with the age at marriage and fertility consequences of Bangladeshi women
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