Rising child marriages, divorces cast shadows on Bangladesh’s future
In 2022, the crude divorce rate doubled to 1.4 per thousand population, up from 0.7 in 2021, as per BBS data
Bangladesh faces a double challenge as both child marriage and divorce rates are on the rise, posing significant threats to the country's social fabric and economic progress.
Worries about child marriage persist as a rising number of marriages occur before the age of 15 and 18. In 2022, marriages before 15 spiked to 6.5%, up from 4.6% in 2018. Shockingly, 40.9% of girls were married before turning 18 in 2022, compared to 30.0% in 2018, marking an alarming annual average increase of 2.18 percentage points.
A report of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) suggests that the sudden surge in early marriages is a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Another report from the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education and the United Nations Population Fund uncovered a significant number of girls absent from schools due to early marriages during the pandemic.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
Mohammad Mainul Islam, professor of Population Sciences at Dhaka University, told The Business Standard, "The marriage rate has increased among those under 15 and 18, impacting the overall crude marriage rate. Despite the legal age for marriage being 18 for girls, child marriage in the country has not improved but has worsened."
The crude marriage rate (CMR) for a population is defined as the number of marriages per 1,000 people in that population. The CMR in Bangladesh reached an unprecedented 18.1 marriages in 2022.
Rural areas exhibited a significantly higher CMR (19.5) compared to urban areas (13.8), as per BBS data. At the divisional level, Rajshahi reported the highest CMR (20.61), while Dhaka had the lowest (15.62).
ASM Amanullah, Dhaka University professor of Sociology, told TBS, "The increasing CMR is not a positive sign for Bangladesh, unlike countries such as Japan where CMR is close to zero."
He highlighted the link between increasing CMR and child marriage, leading to risks like early pregnancy, maternal and neonatal deaths, child malnutrition, and cervical cancer.
Urging action, he said stopping child marriage is crucial for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the government needs to implement urgent measures.
Prof Mainul Islam added that a failure to reduce child marriage would hinder Bangladesh from meeting more than half of the SDG targets, posing a major obstacle to achieving demographic dividends. Child marriage leads to early pregnancies, depriving women of formal education and hindering their empowerment, decision-making, and family life.
Experts raised concerns about whether government agencies tasked with preventing child marriage are effectively fulfilling their responsibilities.
Prof Mainul Islam said child marriage has been rising due to girls not staying in school, leading to a high dropout rate in secondary schools. Specific efforts are needed in vulnerable areas, as the law is not consistently enforced to prevent child marriage.
Coordinated efforts of the government, civil society, Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs, local government, and the health ministry are essential to reducing child marriage, or else the country may lag in various indicators, he added.
Highlighting the benefits of an increase in the age of marriage, the BBS report stated that raising the age of marriage would help in reducing early childbearing, lowering fertility levels, and consequently slowing down population growth. Bangladesh aligns itself with other countries in attempting to curb population growth through an increase in the age of marriage.
Divorce rate doubled in a year
In 2022, the crude divorce rate – the number of marriages that are dissolved each year per 1,000 adults – doubled to 1.4 per thousand population, up from 0.7 in 2021, as per BBS data.
Rural areas show a 50% higher likelihood of divorce compared to urban areas, with the Rajshahi division experiencing the highest rate at 2.2 per thousand population, followed by Khulna at 2.0. Conversely, the Chattogram division has the lowest divorce rate at 0.8 per thousand population.
Prof ASM Amanullah explained that the past low divorce rate was due to social stigma. However, the current trend is changing as women become more educated and empowered, leading to increased decision-making and divorces.
Modernisation, rapid urbanisation, moving into the middle class, and social instability are contributing factors to the rising divorce rate, he said.
The professor suggested that efforts to reduce divorces should focus on increasing social bonding through social engineering, acknowledging the time-consuming nature of the process but emphasising the importance of taking action now.
Despite this, BBS data show an increase in the divorce rate in rural areas, even though women's empowerment levels are lower compared to urban areas.
