Age at first marriage in Nepal: differentials and determinants

The aim of this paper is to investigate the differentials and determinants of female age at first marriage in rural Nepal. The life table technique was employed to calculate median age at marriage. The proportional hazard model was used to study the effect of various socioeconomic variables, and to identify the magnitude and significance of their effects on the timing of first marriage. The data were taken from a sample survey of Palpa and Rupandehi districts in rural Nepal. Both married and unmarried females of marriageable age were included in the survey. Median age at marriage was about 17 years for data from only married females, whereas it was about 18 years for data from married as well as unmarried females of marriageable age. Median age at marriage was about 16 years for uneducated females and 19 years for females educated up to intermediate or higher level. The analysis underestimates the median age at marriage for married females, probably due to right censoring. The risk of getting married early decreased gradually with increasing year-of-birth cohort. The risk of early marriage was higher among females of high socioeconomic status compared with those of low socioeconomic status. Females engaged in service married earlier than those engaged in household work. High socioeconomic status families are motivated, for religious and prestige reasons, to get their daughters married at an early age, preferably before menarche. Thus, education, occupation and age at menarche are the most powerful factors in deciding the timing of first marriage in Nepal.     

Socioeconomic and cultural differentials in age at marriage and the effect on fertility in Nepal

Age at marriage is one of the factors that influence the fertility behaviour of women, particularly in a society like Nepal where contraceptive use is low. Socioeconomic and cultural factors, particularly religion and ethnicity, are important variables in determining age at marriage in Nepal. Fertility was negatively related with age at marriage. Marriage duration had a greater influence on fertility than age at marriage, although these were strongly correlated.     

Ethnic differentials in early childhood mortality in Nepal

This paper investigates the association of early childhood mortality (between birth and second birthday) with ethnicity in Nepal, based on data from the 1976 Nepal Fertility Survey, which was part of the World Fertility Survey. The approach is through a series of hazard models, which incorporate ethnicity, year of birth, mother's illiteracy, father's illiteracy, rural-urban residence, region, sex, maternal age, survival of previous birth, previous birth interval, and breast-feeding as covariates. Ethnic differentials in early childhood mortality are not explained by the other socioeconomic and demographic covariates, except for a modest effect of illiteracy, but the remaining covariates explain a great deal of variability in early childhood mortality itself. Analysis using an improved specification of breast-feeding as an age-varying covariate indicates, on average, that breast-feeding, relative to not breast-feeding, reduces age-specific mortality risks during the first 2 years of life by 76%, a very large effect.     

Divorce in Ethiopia: the impact of early marriage and childlessness

Forty-five per cent of first marriages in Ethiopia end in divorce within 30 years, and two-thirds of women who divorce do so within the first 5 years of marriage. This paper looks at two factors that may have an impact on the risk of divorce in Ethiopia: early age of first marriage, and childlessness within the first marriage. Data used were from the 1990 National Family and Fertility Survey conducted by the Government of Ethiopia. A total of 8757 women of reproductive age (15-49) were analysed. Life table analysis was used to determine the median age at first marriage, first birth and the median duration of marriage. Cox models were analysed to determine the differentials of divorce. The results of this analysis showed that both early age at marriage and childlessness have a significant impact on the risk of divorce. An inverse relationship was found between age at marriage and risk of divorce. Having a child within the first marriage also significantly reduced the risk of divorce. In addition, several cultural and socioeconomic variables were significant predictors of divorce.     

Early marriage and maternal health care utilisation: Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

We use the recursive bivariate probit (RBVP) model to estimate the effects of early marriage on the utilisation of maternal health services in five sub-Saharan countries: Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Chad. Based on recent Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), we find that a woman who married before age 15 was 17 percentage points less likely to use prenatal services; and marrying before age 16 reduced that likelihood by 9.6 percentage points. We have not found any statistically significant reduction in maternal health care utilisation for women who married at age 17 or older.     

Early vision is early in time

Roelfsema, Tolboom, and Khayat have found that neurons in primary visual cortex, V1, increase their spike firing rates to signal image segmentation and attention. V1 responses were in a temporal sequence: first to image motion, next to segmentation, last to attentional signals. The involvement of V1 with segmentation and attention suggests modifying the hierarchical view of visual perception.     

Consanguineous marriage and differentials in age at marriage, contraceptive use and fertility in Pakistan

Fertility rates in Pakistan have remained consistently high over the past three decades. While numerous studies have examined sociodemographic determinants, the role of biological factors, and particularly consanguinity, has received little attention, even though marriage between close biological relatives continues to be the norm in Pakistan. Reproductive behaviour among women in consanguineous (first cousin) and non-consanguineous unions was compared, using data from a 1995 study of multi-ethnic communities in Karachi and the 1990-91 Pakistan Demographic & Health Survey (PDHS). The results show that, although female age at first marriage has been gradually rising in both study samples, women in consanguineous unions married at younger ages and were less likely to use modern contraceptive methods. In the Karachi sample, women in first cousin unions experienced a higher mean number of pregnancies and also reported a higher mean number of children ever born (CEB). However, their mean number of surviving children did not differ from those born to women in non-consanguineous unions, implying higher prenatal and/or postnatal losses in couples related as first cousins. On the other hand, the PDHS showed both lower CEB values for women in consanguineous marriages and a lower number of surviving children. Given the continuing popularity of consanguineous marriage, these findings have important implications for future fertility reduction in Pakistan.     

The win-win potential for motherhood and science

Women wishing to combine children with a research career should not be seen as taking a backstep but as bolstering both activities, argues Marlene Belfort.     

Herbivore host choice and optimal bad motherhood

When theory predicts which phenotypes are well adapted to a given environment, the data do not always match the predictions. Host-plant selection by herbivorous insects is one such example. Herbivorous insects often appear to make poor choices about where their offspring should develop. New evidence presented by Scheirs et al. suggests that adult insects can choose oviposition sites that enhance their own long-term fitness at the expense of their individual offspring. This suggests that herbivorous insects might be genuinely bad mothers, that host choice is nonetheless adaptive, and that theory needs to incorporate new assumptions about host effects on adult performance.     

Divorce in the early years of marriage in England and Wales: results from a prospective study using linked records

A representative sample of over 1000 couples who married during 1979 in England and Wales was followed from the date of marriage until mid-1984 to investigate the characteristics of couples who divorce soon after marriage. Results of this 5 year study show that couples who apparently lived together before marriage had a below average chance of early divorce, whereas couples where the addresses of the partners before marriage were very close had a significantly high rate of early breakdown. The chance of early divorce was significantly above average for spouses marrying in their teens and for both husbands and wives who, at their marriage, belonged to social class 5 (work in unskilled manual occupations). Couples who married with a civil ceremony had an above average (and those marrying with a religious ceremony a below average) risk of early divorce, but such differences were found to be negligible on analyzing the results from a matched case-control study in which each "case" marriage (one which did end in early divorce) was matched with a "control" marriage (one which did not end in early divorce). There is substantial evidence that age at marriage and previous marital status of the marriage partners have a decided influence upon the propensity to divorce. 2 conclusions concerning fertility are more likely than the average married couple to have had a pre-maritally conceived child, and 2) that couples who divorce relatively quickly tend on average to have larger family sizes, even if children who were pre-martitally conceived are exluded.