Application of a marriage model in rural Bangladesh

Abstract

The standard marriage model is evaluated with respect to its applicability in Bangladesh, so that reliable and consistent estimates of mean marriage age for females in Bangladesh can be made. The standard marriage model proposes that a person enters the marriage market and waits until marriage occurs. The distribution of age at entry into the marriage market is generally normal. The delays until marriage occurs are modelled as negative exponential distributions. In a population where marriage is universal, the standard schedule of 1st marriage frequencies developed by Coale and McNeil is a close approximation to the convolution of a normal curve and several exponential distributions G(x), the cumulative probability of marriage at age x. Since the standard distribution of age at 1st marriage is closely approximated by the convolution of a normal curve and several negative exponential distributions, the age at entry to the marriage market for females, and whether this is normally distributed, should be examined. 1 cross-sectional study in Bangladesh concludes that onset of menarche determines entry into the marriage market. The proportion of ever married females by single year of age which is available from cross sectional demographic surveys can be fitted to the Coale-McNeil model. Marriages in the rural areas of Bangladesh seem to follow the pattern of entering the marriage market at puberty, then waiting until actual marriage takes place. This model of entries and delays can also be fitted to cross-sectional data from rural Bangladesh. The use of the Coale-McNeil marriage model in rural Bangladesh is appropriate for estimating the mean age of marriage.