India’s quiet turnaround on early marriage
Visualisation
At a Glance
India’s quiet turnaround on early marriage
Three decades ago, over half of India’s young women married before turning 18. Today, that figure has dropped to roughly one in five, marking one of the most significant social shifts in modern Indian history.
The fall, in six chapters
Six consecutive National Family Health Surveys since 1992 show an uninterrupted decline in child marriage.
In 1992-93, 54% of women aged 20-24 had married before turning 18. By 1998-99, that had eased to roughly 50%. By 2005-06, it stood at 47.4%. The number then breaks sharply: by 2015-16, it had fallen to 26.8%, a drop of nearly 21 percentage points in a single decade, the steepest of any interval the survey has recorded. The two most recent rounds show the decline continuing at a slower pace, 23.3% in 2019-21 and 20.1% in 2023-24.
Where the door is still ajar
National averages mask sharp regional disparities. West Bengal, Bihar, and Rajasthan still see over one in three young women marrying before adulthood. In contrast, Kerala stands at barely 3%.
So what is Kerala doing that the others aren't? The primary differentiator is education: in Kerala, most women complete 10 or more years of schooling, compared to only one in three in high-prevalence states. Every additional year in the classroom directly correlates with delayed marriage.
The unresolved challenge: Teenage pregnancy
While early marriage rates have dropped substantially, teenage pregnancy rates have remained largely stagnant. Many young women still enter motherhood as teenagers despite marrying legally after 18.
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Beyond 18: The policy frontier
India is currently debating raising the minimum legal age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 to match men, aiming for higher educational attainment, improved maternal health outcomes, and gender parity under proposed legal reforms like the Uniform Civil Code.
Global Context: Legal Loopholes Beyond India
Child marriage and adolescent motherhood are not unique to developing nations:
- United States: Minor marriage remained legal nationwide until 2018, with over 300,000 legal marriages involving minors recorded between 2000 and 2021. In 2023, the US recorded ~141,000 teenage births (~13 per 1,000 girls aged 15–19).
- United Kingdom: Parental consent exemptions allowed marriage at 16 in England and Wales until 2023 (and remain permitted in Scotland). Teen births account for ~2% of all live births.
- Australia, France, Spain, & Italy: Maintain judicial or statutory exceptions permitting marriage at 16 under specific conditions, while continuing to record adolescent birth rates between 3 and 5 per 1,000.
The pattern repeats itself: the legal age is 18, but the lived age, in pockets of every one of these countries, is younger.