ALAPPUZHA: Malayali men love their professional life more than wedded bliss. Hence they marry late compared to those belonging to the other states in India. Their mean age of marriage is 27.3 in both rural and urban areas, which is the highest in the country. They are followed by the men in Tamil Nadu (25.6) Karnataka, Assam and Odisha (25.2 each).
This has been revealed by the sample registration system baseline survey conducted in 2014 by the Registrar-General of India released on Tuesday. Kerala girls marry at the mean age of 21.4, behind those of Jammu and Kashmir which tops at 22 years. Tamil Nadu (21.2) and Punjab (21) also have impressive figures. Karnataka women marry at 20.6 years.
The survey details available on the Registrar General of India website say Indian men get married at an average age of 23 and women 20. But Rajasthan boys prefer to do it early at the average age of 21.3. Men from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana marry at 23.4 and 23.3 years respectively.
There are at least nine states where the mean marriage of girls is less than 20, including Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan (19.4 each) and Bihar (19.5). Girls in rural areas in Bengal are married off at 18.8 years, the only state that has recorded a mean marriage age less than 19 years in rural areas.
The categorized data says men belonging to the general category marry at the mean age of 23.5 while women from the same category are married off at the age of 20.2. The data for Scheduled Tribes and Castes is no different from the others.
The SC men get married at 22.6 and women 19.6; ST men at 22.5 and women at 19.8. The survey was carried out by continuous enumeration of births and deaths in a sample of villages/urban blocks. “The number of samples included 4,964 from rural and 3897 from urban,” according to the survey.
