Determinants of Early Marriage among the Women: A Study on Khulna District

Abstract

Early marriage is one of the major social problems in Bangladesh. Poverty has been the major factor leading to early marriage in Bangladesh. However, this study was an attempt to investigate the determinants affecting early marriage. The study is explanatory in nature as it tries to explain the determinants that affect the early marriage in the Khulna district of Bangladesh. The study was carried out in two areas, i.e, Paikgacha Village under Paikgacha Upzilla and 23 No. ward of Khulna city. The study adopted a survey research design. The population targeted by the study included only female respondents of 18 ages or above age group. 287 respondents were selected through a simple random sampling procedure using an interview schedule as survey research for data assortment. The major finding of the revision was that most of the respondents (64.5%) were married and got at an early age. Results revealed that the majority of the respondents were affected by socioeconomic factors as for their early marriages. The study, however, identified association of premature marriage of the respondents with socio-cultural factors (p<.001), economic factors (p<.005), areas of residence (p<.001) at a strong significant level. So the study concluded that early marriage is affected by different sociodemographic factors such as parental education and income, parental early marriage, husband education, and income, area of residence.