Levels, trends and differentials of marriage dissolution and remarriage in India: Evidences from Census Data

Present paper is an attempt to understand levels, trends and differentials of marriage dissolution during past three decades (1971-2001) in India by using census data. This paper also examines the remarriage cases among the persons who have experienced divorce/separation. Whether the cases of marriage dissolution are same for both the sexes or higher or lower among the particular sex throughout over decades? What is the dissimilarity in their age pattern? Is the sex ratio balanced, among those who have experienced marriage dissolution in their lives?
Result reveals that over the last few decades gender disparity between the sexes has been widened among the divorced/separated population. Sex ratio of divorced persons which is the ‘ratio of females to males in a population’ is much higher than the sex ratio of married population. One of the surprising findings from the study is that, in some of the states sex ratio among the divorced/separated population is very high, which is more than 5,000 females per thousand males, especially in Kerala and Manipur. This imbalance indirectly shows that practice of remarriage is more common among the males as compared to females. Analysis reveals that the dissolution rates are higher among the southern and northeastern states as compared to the northern, western and central states.