- Name
- Proportion of women aged 20-24 years who were married or in a union before age 15 and before age 18.
- Indicator purpose
- This indicator provides the proportion of women aged 20 to 24 years who were first married or in a union by age 15 and age 18.
- Abstract
- Marriage before the age of 18 is a fundamental violation of human rights. Child marriage often compromises a girl’s development by resulting in early pregnancy and social isolation, interrupting her schooling, limiting her opportunities for career and vocational advancement and placing her at increased risk of intimate partner violence. In many cultures, girls reaching puberty are expected to assume gender roles associated with womanhood. These include entering a union and becoming a mother.
- Contact organization / person
- Statistical Institute of Belize (SIB)
Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS)
- Unit of measure
- Percentage (%)
- Other characteristics
- The issue of child marriage is addressed in several international conventions and agreements. Although marriage is not mentioned directly in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, child marriage is linked to other rights – such as the right to freedom of expression, the right to protection from all forms of abuse, and the right to be protected from harmful traditional practices.
- Classification used
- Informal unions are generally defined as those in which a couple lives together for some time, intends to have a lasting relationship, but for which there has been no formal civil or religious ceremony (i.e., cohabitation). Both formal (i.e., marriages) and informal unions are covered under this indicator
- Disaggregation
- is by age, income, place of residence, geographic location, education, ethnicity (for some countries).
- Key statistical concepts
- This is indicator is calculated by the number of women aged 20-24 who were first married or in union before age 15 (or before age 18) divided by the total number of women aged 20-24 in the population multiplied by 100.
- Recommended uses
- This indicator is used to measure the number of women aged 20-24 who were first married or in union before age 15 (or before age 18) and to halve that number of women aged 20-24 who were first married or in union before age 15 (or before age 18) or have no women married or in a union before age 15 (or before age 18).
- Other comments
- There are existing tools and mechanisms for data collection that countries have implemented to monitor the situation with regards to this indicator. The modules used to collect information on marital status among women and men of reproductive age (15-49 years) in the DHS and MICS have been fully harmonized.
All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.
- Baseline
- Age 15 49 married before Age 15:
Women: 5.5%
Men: 4.1
Age 20 49 married before 18:
Women: 29.0
Men: 16.3
Age 15 19 currently married or in a union:
Women: 20.8
Men: 10.7
- Target 2020
- No worse or declining by 2021
- Target 2030
- No persons are married or in a Union before age 18
