Marriage Late or Forgone: The Case of Lebanon

This paper investigates marriage patterns, particularly the rates of marriage and marital homogamy in Lebanon. The legacy of sixteen years of civil war has resulted in imbalances between males and females and institutionalization of migration particularly among young men. This along with the increased levels of women’s education has affected the marriage market for both men and women. We hypothesize that those with higher levels of education will have lower marriage rates, higher levels of women never-married by age 35, and lower marital homogamy. This study uses data from the Lebanese Family Health Survey 2004 conducted by the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Central Administration of Statistics as part of an agreement with the Pan-Arab Project for Family Health (PAPFAM). It collected data from 5532 households and 3365 ever married women between ages 15-54 with overall response rate of 96.2%.Data on households and persons in household roster are used