Notes

• Topic: Health: Population: Dynamics
• Definition: Mean age at marriage, male shows the average length of single life expressed in years among those males who marry before age 50. It is a synthetic indicator calculated from marital status categories of men and women aged 15 to 54 at the census or survey date.
• Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Marriage Data.
• Notes from original source: Note that the SMAM takes a single point in time and calculates the age at marriage from the marital status of the population aged between 15 and 50. This value is different from the mean age of marriage that is calculated from first marriage rates in a respective period (commonly used in countries with complete marriage registration systems) or cohort measures of entry into first marriage or union (based on retrospective survey questions on age at first marriage or union formation). The retrospective nature of the SMAM means that values are influenced by age and marital status specific mortality and migration.
• Limitations and exceptions: The estimates by age may be affected by age misreporting. Marital status may be misreported, particularly in societies where divorce or separation is not socially acceptable. The differences in marital status categories included over time and their definitions limit comparability of data across time and countries. Data derived from surveys with small samples are subject to sampling error.