NEW DELHI: The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6, 2023-24) has reported a decline in underage marriage rates in India. Specifically, 20.1% of women aged 20-24 were married before the legal age of 18, down from 23.3% in the previous NFHS-5 (2019-21). For men in the 25-29 age group, 15.9% married before the legal age of 21, representing a 17.7% decline from the earlier survey.
The report also highlighted gender-based violence, noting that the percentage of married women aged 18-49 who experienced spousal violence decreased from 29.2% in 2019-21 to 22.3% in 2023-24. However, the disparity between rural and urban populations is significant, with 24.4% of rural women facing spousal violence compared to 17.5% of urban women. This figure was 31.6% for rural women and 24.2% for urban women in the 2019-21 survey.
The prevalence of underage marriage has shown a consistent decline over several NFHS rounds: it was at 26.8% in 2015-16 (NFHS-4) and 47.4% in 2005-06 (NFHS-3). The current survey indicates a pronounced disparity between rural and urban underage marriages among women, with 23.3% in rural areas and 11.4% in urban areas. In the 2019-21 survey, these figures were 27% and 14.7%, respectively. A similar pattern was observed for men, with 19% in rural areas marrying before the age of 21 compared to 9.7% in urban areas—down from 21.1% for rural men and 11.3% for urban men in the last survey.
The survey also revealed that 6.7% of women aged 15-19 were either mothers or pregnant at the time of the survey, a steady figure from the previous survey. Regarding gender-based sexual violence, the data indicated that 0.7% of women aged 19-29 had experienced such violence before the age of 18, down from 1.2% in 2019-21.
