The changing levels, trends and patterns of marriages in India: through an exploration of the marriage rates

In India,where marriage is nearly universal and since considerable proportions of marriages in India take place at ages close to the start of the reproductive age of women, raising the age at marriage is seen as one of the relatively few important policy interventions'beyond family planning' that might affect fertility.Though in India law abides people for marriage registration but still there is poor registration of such data and not much effort are also being made in this regard.In India there is complete lack of data on the number of marriages and hence no attempt was made to study the marriage rates which reflect the frequencies with which marriages are taking place in the population.This study attempts have been made to find out the marriage rates in India,so as to understand the level and pattern of frequency of marriages in India and across different states under different sections of the population.This study uses the second and third rounds of District Level Household Survey of India for innovative estimation of various marriage rates and also to find out risk factors related to marriages below legal age at marriage. This rates on marriage can use by the demographers for construction of nuptiality tables.