Age of Marriage

The bar graph shows the downturn, over the past 30-40 years, in the percentage of women aged 15-19 who are married in 6 Arab countries. The table gives us the age of first marriage for men and women in 12 Arab countries, plus Turkey and Iran.

The bar chart shows the fall in all 6 Arab countries over the past 3-4 decades. The most striking characteristic of the bar chart is the UAE, where the percentage of 15-19 year old married women declined from 57% in 1975 to 8% in 1995. Other enormous drops are in Libya, from 40% in 1973 to 1% in 1995 and Kuwait, from 38% in 1970 to 5% in 1996. There were other significant falls in Libya, Tunisia and Kuwait. The age of first marriage, in the table, showed a range from mid- to late-20s for men and from low- to mid-20s for women.

To sum up, the only countries to come into view in both bar chart and table are the UAE, Kuwait and Palestine. The most dramatic drop in the bar chart was in the UAE. The table shows that in 2000 the average aged of marriage for women in the UAE was 23.1.

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