Majority of women in West Bengal married by 21, only 17% in Delhi

Abstract

A majority of women in West Bengal and Jharkhand were married by the age of 21, while the proportion in Jammu and Kashmir was less than 10% in 2020. In Delhi, over 17% of women married before 21. In the country as a whole, nearly 30% of women married by the time they were 21, just released government data shows.
J&K also had the highest mean age of marriage of 26 years followed by Punjab and Delhi, where it was 24.4 years. It was the lowest at 21 in West Bengal and Jharkhand and 22 in Odisha. The average for India was 22.7.

There were no marriages below 18 years in Kerala in 2020 though the proportion of those marrying at 21 or older in the state was just 72.6%, the same as Bihar, and just marginally higher than Uttar Pradesh (72%). This was because about a quarter of the women in these states were married by 20 years.

About a third of rural women in India married between 18 and 20 years of age compared to about 18.6% in urban areas. The incidence of below-18 marriages was highest in Jharkhand (5.8%) and West Bengal (4.7%). Other states with more than 3% of women married before the age of 18 were Odisha, Bihar and UP. The average age of women who got married before 18 years was lowest in Telangana (15 years) and Rajasthan (15.4 years).[Read More]