Global diffusion of laws: The case of minimum age of marriage legislation, 1965–2015

Figures & data

Figure 1. Cumulative number of countries with new minimum age legislation (set at age 18) by year.

Table 1. Measurements and sources of independent and control variables.

Variable	Description	Source
Legislation regarding age of marriage	Dummy variable 1 = marriage age set at 18, with or without exceptions; 0 = marriage age below 18 (for one or both sexes) or no minimum age	Lee et al. 2012; GNB 2017; IPU 2016; ACFP 2013; Lexadin 2016; World Policy Center 2017; Psaila et al. 2016; CRC and CEDAW country reports
Embeddedness in the world polity	Number of INGOs in which residents of a country are members	UIA 2011 (Matthias 2013 and Amahazion 2016)
Embeddedness in the international women’s movement	Number of women INGOs in which residents of a country are members	UIA 2005 (Frank, 2005)
Treaty ratifications	Total number of ratifications of treaties related to women’s/children’s rights	UN Treaty Database
Female empowerment	Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments	ICPRS – Women in Parliament, 1945–2003: Cross-National Dataset (Paxton et al., 2008)
Religion	Dummy variable. 1 = greater than one half of population is Muslim/Catholic/Protestant; 0 = less than one half of population is Muslim/Catholic/Protestant	Teorell et al (2011)
State capacity	Government spending as a proportion of GDP	World Bank Development Indicators
GDP per capita		World Bank Development Indicators

Figure 2. Smoothed Hazard Estimate: Minimum age of 18 legislation (135 Countries that had passed minimum age legislation after 1965).

Table 2. Survival analysis models: Estimates of coefficients impacting global legislation (1965–2015).

Variable	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7
Embeddedness in the world polity (INGO memberships)	0.208 (0.192)	0.192 (0.186)		0.246 (0.176)		0.224 (0.172)
Embeddedness in the international women’s movement (WINGO membership)			0.144 (0.180)		0.104 (0.172)
Treaty ratifications (Total)	0.283* (0.126)		0.307* (0.121)	0.376** (0.119)	0.430*** (0.114)
CEDAW		0.859 (0.485)				0.635 (0.459)
CRC		1.383** (0.539)				1.192** (0.510)
Marriage convention		0.542 (0.285)				0.584* (0.269)
Female parliamentarians	0.418* (0.199)	0.453* (0.201)	0.508** (0.190)				0.608*** (0.184)
Muslim	−0.653 (0.366)	−0.668 (0.359)	−0.717* (0.366)	−0.786* (0.335)	−0.920** (0.335)	−0.750* (0.334)	−0.540 (0.352)
Catholic	−0.470 (0.311)	−0.415 (0.315)	−0.463 (0.303)	−0.414 (0.299)	−0.442 (0.289)	−0.382 (0.301)	−0.534 (0.300)
Protestant	0.390 (0.758)	0.304 (0.771)	0.599 (0.633)	0.229 (0.739)	0.268 (0.615)	−0.147 (0.744)	0.469 (0.627)
State capacity	0.898* (0.406)	0.785 (0.405)	0.841* (0.384)	1.158** (0.387)	1.047** (0.358)	1.031** (0.385)	0.632 (0.355)
GDP	−0.203 (0.127)	−0.183 (0.128)	−0.149 (0.116)	−0.254* (0.118)	−0.158 (0.104)	−0.214 (0.118)	−0.046 (0.102)
Number of observations^a	2539	2539	2772	3116	3450	3116	2772
Number of subjects (countries)	112	112	117	119	124	119	117
Number of failures	64	64	69	69	74	69	69
LR chi2	26.13	34.19	31.48	27.18	28.95	36.04	23.10
Prob > chi2	0.001	0.0002	0.0001	0.0003	0.0001	0.000	0.0008
Log likelihood	−248.17	−244.14	−267.53	−278.11	−301.42	−273.68	−271.72

NOTE: ***p ≤ 0.001; **p ≤ 0.01; *p ≤ 0.05.

Standard errors reported in parentheses. N = country years at risk = 4231Random Effects.

^a Numbers of observations and cases change across models based on data availability. Results do not change when the models are restricted to cases without missing data.

Table

Country	Year minimum age of marriage is set to 18 (from not-set/below 18 to 18, with or without exceptions)^a,b
1 Ivory Coast *	1967
2 Zambia	1967
3 Netherlands	1970
4 Mauritius °	1971
5 Bangladesh °	1972
6 Austria	1973
7 Lichtenstein	1973
8 Lesotho	1974
9 Tanzania	1974
10 Costa Rica	1976
11 Uganda	1976
12 Colombia	1977
13 Cuba	1978
14 Croatia	1981
15 Jamaica	1982
16 Malaysia	1985
17 Algeria *	1987
18 Congo Rep	1987
19 Libya	1987
20 Burkina Faso	1989
21 Haiti	1989
22 San Marino	1989
23 Vietnam *	1989
24 Belgium	1990
25 Germany °	1990
26 Namibia °	1990
27 Philippines *	1990
28 Angola	1991
29 Australia	1991
30 Rwanda *	1991
31 Cambodia	1992
32 Czech Republic °	1993
33 Iceland	1993
34 Laos	1993
35 Slovakia °	1993
36 Estonia °	1994
37 Eritrea * °	1994
38 Bulgaria	1995
39 Ireland	1995
40 Burundi	1996
41 El Salvador *	1997
42 Latvia °	1997
43 Georgia *	1998
44 Russia	1998
45 Sri Lanka/Ceylon	1998
46 Bhutan *	1999
47 Trinidad and Tobago	1999
48 Lithuania	2000
49 Oman *	2000
50 Panama^c	2000
51 Central African Republic	2001
52 Ghana *	2001
53 Kazakhstan	2001
54 Kyrgyz Republic *	2001
55 South Africa	2001
56 Belarus	2002
57 Djibouti	2002
58 Mongolia *	2002
59 Serbia	2002
60 Belize	2003
61 Ethiopia *	2003
62 Maldives	2003
63 Botswana *	2004
64 China *	2004
65 Jordan	2004
66 Kenya^d	2004
67 Macedonia	2004
68 Mauritania *	2004
69 Morocco	2004
70 Mozambique	2004
71 Comoros	2005
72 Gambia	2005
73 Albania *	2006
74 Cyprus	2006
75 France	2006
76 Benin	2007
77 Chile	2007
78 Madagascar *	2007
79 Togo	2007
80 Tunisia	2007
81 Bosnia	2008
82 Egypt	2008
83 Argentina	2009
84 Fiji	2009
85 Malawi	2009
86 Nepal *	2009
87 Romania	2009
88 Sierra Leone	2010
89 Tajikistan	2010
90 Guinea *	2011
91 South Korea	2011
92 Liberia *	2011
93 Azerbaijan	2012
94 Guatemala *	2012
95 Armenia	2013
96 Israel	2013
97 Switzerland	2013
98 Chad	2015

* The age of marriage is 18 without exceptions.

° Marriage age was set at 18 upon independence/new state formation.

^a If the minimum legal age of marriage was already 18 in 1965, the country is excluded from this list. Please find a list of these countries in the following page.

^b Sources: Melchiorre (2004), Kim et al (2013), World Policy Center (2017), CRC and CEDAW country reports, Lexadin (2016).

^c Panama raised the minimum age of marriage to 18 with exceptions in 2000. In 2015, the marriage age was set at 18 without exceptions.

^d Kenya raised the minimum age of marriage to 18 with exceptions in 2004. In 2014, the marriage age was set at 18 without exceptions.

Table

Country
1. Antigua and Barbuda
2. Bahamas
3. Burma
4. Canada
5. Denmark
6. Finland
7. Greece
8. Hungary
9. Iraq
10. India*
11. Italy
12. Japan
13. New Zealand
14. Nicaragua
15. Poland
16. Portugal
17. Singapore
18. Spain
19. UK

*The age of marriage is 18 without exceptions.

Table

Country
1. Andorra
2. Aruba
3. Bahrain
4. Barbados
5. Bolivia
6. Brunei
7. Cameroon
8. Congo DR
9. Dominica
10. Equatorial Guinea
11. Gabon
12. Grenada
13. Guyana
14. Honduras
15. Indonesia
16. Iran
17. Kuwait
18. Lebanon
19. Luxembourg
20. Mali
21. Malta
22. Marshall Islands
23. Mexico^a
24. Micronesia
25. Moldova
26. Nauru
27. Niger
28. Nigeria
29. Pakistan
30. Papua New Guinea
31. Paraguay
32. Peru
33. Qatar
34. Saudi Arabia
35. Senegal
36. Seychelles
37. Solomon Islands
38. Sudan
39. Thailand
40. Turkey
41. Ukraine
42. United States of America (no federal law)
43. Uruguay
44. Uzbekistan
45. Vanuatu
46. Venezuela
47. Yemen

^a On 30 April 2015, the Chamber of Deputies approved a reform of Article 148 of the Federal Civil Code in order to establish full age (18 years) as the requirement for entering into marriage, but this reform has not officially entered into force.

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