Increasing legal age for women's marriage has enormous benefits: Report

October 22, 2020 13:14

Increasing the legal age for the marriage of women has enormous benefits on social and economic fronts including lowering Maternal Mortality Ratio, improvement of nutrition levels and more opportunities for women to pursue higher education and careers, according to a research note by SBI Ecowrap released on Thursday.

It said increasing the marriage age will push the mean marriage age higher and will lead to more females doing graduation and hence improving the female labour force participation ratio. As per its estimations, the percentage of females doing graduation will increase by at least 5-7 percentage points from the current level of 9.8 per cent.

"On the social front, this will lead to social benefits like lowering Maternal Mortality Ratio as well as improvement of nutrition levels while on financial front opportunities will be opened up for women to pursue higher education and careers and become financially empowered, thus resulting in a more egalitarian society in thinking," the report said.

Highlighting that the mean marriage age in India is already at 22.3 years and any increase in marriage age will be notional in nature, the SBI Ecowrap report noted that there is a need for change in the mindset of people regarding female education and marriage.

"Still, 35 per cent of females in India are married before the age of 21 years. The situation is grave in some states. Surprisingly, the situation in West Bengal is the worst across all states with the mean marriage age only 20.9 years and almost 47 per cent of females getting married before the age of 21 years, even worse than Bihar and Rajasthan," the report said. -- ANI

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