Marriage at an earlier than ideal age in six Latin American capital cities

Abstract

The study of nuptiality has taken on urgency, for demographers as well as for sociologists, with the increased world concern over sustained high fertility and the evident contribution of early marriage to that high fertility. Moreover, along with despair over the efficacy of conventional family planning programmes has come an expectation that more basic institutional changes, such as changes in marriage patterns, will be necessary in order finally to achieve a tolerably low world population growth rate. Yet our understanding of the determinants of such primary nuptiality dimensions as age at first marriage is very imperfect and unlikely to give much guidance in policy formation.