Marriage - some statistics

Last year, on 22 April 2015, I attended a lecture titled "Marriage : The golden cage" by Prof K Srinivasan, National Fellow ( ICSSR) MIDS & Emeritus Professor, International Institute for Population Sciences, Deonar, Mumbai. The lecture was at MIDS, Adyar. This lecture was a comparative study of the statistics of marriages (1) among various states in India (2) India and a few selected countries. Statistics on marriages versus live-in relationships were also discussed. The major variables were age groups, number of children, changes over time.

I usually don’t write about social studies, at least not in the structured academic way they are discussed, but this was quite fascinating because, it was a quantitative study – actual numbers were on hand – rather than just a random discussion based on opinions. The title gives away the academically popular socially leftist prejudice against marriage, typically out of touch with the more conservative society at large, which nevertheless makes the same joke about marriage in public discussions. My perception is that social conservatives simply avoid such studies, preferring to mouth inane bromides rather than collecting statistics.

The actual paper published in Economic and Political Weekly but also available at this blog, can be studied here and has extensive statistics. The MIDS audience – only about thirty people, half of whom were MIDS students or researchers - seemed barely interested in what was being presented. They were looking for opportunities to rebel against popularity of marriage and criticise the inequalities of caste. I would perhaps have had the same mindset twenty years ago; I have changed.

The Biggest Gap

I found the statistics eye-opening. The biggest gap I could see from the statistics was between Asian and European countries – not between developed and developing economies or even between caste groups or religious groups or geographical regions in India. I suspect this is why these statistics are not discussed more often in pubic fora. The groups studying these data are abysmally dismayed by social conservatism and traditionalism in Asia.

While the age of marriage has risen across all countries, the prime drivers seem to be individual prosperity and formal women’s education.

For example, the percentage of unmarried women in the age group 15-19 has risen from 29% in 1961 to 88% in 2011. The effects of the Sarda act and the war against not just child marriage are quite visible. In fact, this has morphed into the war against teen marriage, in the last forty years, as regardless of party, all  Governments and most of society have meekly accepted that all teenagers are “children”, and that lawyers, social activists and parents have far superior judgment and jurisdiction over teenagers’ social lives than their own natural biological or social urges. This is the triumph of the Constitutional machinery over Biology, as insidious in my opinion as the forced sterilizations during the Emergency in India.

More and more Indian women get married in their twenties, and a small but growing percentage in their thirties. Indian men get married five years later than women, across age groups.

There is a steady secular rise in age of marriage in age groups 15-19 20-24 25-29 but secular decline in 30-35.

Marriage is later in Kerala for women but most do get married, in spite of higher literacy and better health conditions.

Mean age at marriage

Year	Kerala	TN
1961	16	16
1991	19	18
2011	22	24

The speaker listed the following as Causes for drop in marriage rates in western societies. Some of these are now coming true in urban India.

1. Rise in individualism 
2. Economic independence of women
3. Skill specialization
4. Rising gender equality 

I suspect migration and breakdown of communities are also major factors. Most jobs are not available locally, young adults prefer the adventure and social freedom of living in different cities and countries, especially out of the control and supervision of the parents and relatives. I also suspect that tremendous influence of cinemas, showcasing romantic storylines, music of the same nature, and extremely limited opportunities for socializing with the opposite gender are significant factors. But I don't know if sociologists study these. School and college offers some shot at romance, but most people prefer spouses of different age groups, and this is not possible in colleges. It sometimes happens in the workplace, but the choices are severely limited. The explosion of social dating websites and apps in western society, show that they have similar difficulties finding suitable partners, with none of the fallback options of caste and family (both of which are apparently seen as weaknesses rather than strengths by most sociologists).

Divorce Rates

Unmarried women past age 30 are 19% in Korea 26% in USA, 35% in Japan, but in France and UK  they are in high 40s, nearly 50s in percentage. These are partly because of late marriages but mostly because of high divorce rates in Western countries.

Single women at age 30-34

Year	France	Japan	India	UK	USA
1961	10	10	NA	NA	NA
2011	48	35	4	48	36

(Note: Several of these statistics can be found in the paper published in Economic & Political Weekly and also found in this blog. But some statistics were presented at the  MIDS lecture, and I quickly jotted them down – they are not in the EPW paper as tables.)

Out of Wedlock Births

The real conservatism of Asia is shown by these statistics. Live in relationships and out of wedlock births are negligible in Asia. They are less than 1% in Japan and India. These are 9% in UK 40% in USA.

Population is below replacement rate in Korea Japan (incidentally also true of Germany Russia and Italy, as I have seen from other articles).

The primary driving force is easy cheap contraceptives.

Caste and Marriage

Contrary to popular opinion, we are quite united by caste, not necessarily divided by it, based on these statistics below.

Study by Das and Roy findings below (survey not census)

Caste very strong among Muslims and Christians even among SC/ST. (Shouldn’t Indian society be cheering this secularism?)

Same caste marriages are:
97% in TamilNadu
Low 80s in Kerala Gujarat Maharashtra Haryana
High 90s in UP, MP, Rajasthan Karnataka Chattisgarh 

Women marrying outside caste 10% India 2% Tamilnadu

Women marrying outside economic group 21% India 14% Tamilnadu

Women marrying lower caste men 12% in Kerala 1% in Tamilnadu 

Women marrying outside caste in Tamilnadu is lowest in India, said the speaker, and said this was a surprise considering the long history of the anti-caste Dravidian movement in Tamilnadu.

Postscript

I stumbled upon an unusual article, from one of the people I follow on Twitter, statistically discussing time of marriage, IQ, corruption, civic sense etc in Europe. The basic marker is called a Hajnal line that divides Eastern from  Western Europe. Based on the age at which women marry. I include this because it is relevant and fascinating.

Links
1. The Golden Cage by K Srinivasan and KS James 
2. The Hajnal Line  
3. Renminbi as International reserve currency
4. Lady and Gentlemen 
5. சாதியை மாற்றும் மூலதனம்

An End to Chinese Cruelty

A great cruelty was recently reversed! Or ended partially. China ended its One Child totalitarianism two days back. A tremendous leap forward in human rights. Whole generations have grown up with no aunts or uncles or brothers or sisters. Now that is set to change. 

I wonder why it has been met with no celebration at all. Why this deafening silence? I think the fear of Malthusian "overpopulation" has not abated. As Matt Ridley observes, the human race is the only one that gets more prosperous as we get more populous. Our population is our strength, he avers. As the economist Julian Simon has observed, most things become cheaper as technology, markets and human progress make their impact felt.

I think the cacophony of newspapers, artists, politicians, religious organizations, aid activists and philanthropists - both super rich and otherwise, who have  a strong vested interest in perennially complaining that the world is poor, are primarily to blame. The strong myth that the "Rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer" in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, is primarily driving it. 

The phrase "demographic dividend" has worked wonders, as has the clear realization that in 20 years, several billion have dramatically improved their prosperity, education, health, and happiness.

2014 has had a wonderful begining. Let us hope it continues.

Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch

Two German scientists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, devised chlorine gas weapons that were used against French and British troops, in the First World War. Haber’s first wife committed suicide. Then they went on to invent new forms of explosives. During the Second World War, they worked for Hitler, developing a coal based substitute for petroleum that fuelled Nazi planes and trucks.

I had never heard of them until last year. I suspect you, the reader, are reading about them for the first time.

These two men are my heroes - more than Einstien, Salk, Fleming, Bardeen, Rutherford.

Why?

In 1900, the world had two billion people. In 2013, it has seven billion. How did this population explosion happen? Why has there been no famine due to food shortage? All famines in the last two hundred years have been because of wars, lack of access or poor administration. Food deficit has NEVER been an issue.

80% of the food humans eat, by weight, comes from only 12 species of plants – rice, wheat, corn, barley, sorghum, soybean, manioc, potato, sweet potato, sugarcane, sugar-beet and banana. They need the right soil and water, but also a vital fertilizing element – nitrogen. The Earth’s atmosphere is 80% nitrogen, but in this form, plants cannot use it. They need something called fixed nitrogen, which is produced by lightning, natural nitrates in the soil, animal dung, decaying plant material and certain legumes.

Crucially, the amount of fixed nitrogen available by these natural processes limits the amount of food crops 

humans can grow, regardless of the land and water available. In the 19^th century, this problem was circumvented by expanding the area of land under cultivation and utilizing mountains of guano (bat and bird dung) and saltpeter discovered in South America. Europe imported guano from South America like they imported spices and clothes from India, silk and tea from China and slaves from Africa – in ship loads.

In the twentieth century, these South American supplies ran out. So, nitrogen shortage threatened food supply; unless somebody discovered a way to manufacture artificial fertilizer, using the nitrogen in the atmosphere. This is exactly what Haber and Bosch did. They invented the Haber-Bosch process, ammonia fertilizers, massive factories that would produce them in vast quantities.

They won Nobel prizes for this – Haber in 1920 and Bosch in 1932. France was hunting for Haber as a war criminal, and he was hiding in Switzerland, but after he was awarded the Nobel, France gave up the hunt. For the next decade, France and England used their armies to try to steal the industrial secret that the Haber-Bosch process was; but it was too complex to be copied or stolen and too vital to be destroyed. The great fear was that it not only produced ammonia fertilizer, but also explosives for Hitler’s army.

Today all nitrogen fertilizer is produced by the Haber-Bosch process. Four billion people owe their existence to their invention, but are ignorant that such men lived and what they gave the world.

I will stop here, since it is already three paragraphs more than I planned to write. I read about them in a book called “The Alchemy of Air”, by Thomas Hager. Another excellent resource is Vaclav Smil.