Misreporting of females' ages creates obstacles in tackling early marriage

Misreporting is complicating the efforts to address the problem of early marriage in Bangladesh, a new study by icddr,b reveals.

The study, recently published in the journal Asian Population Studies, shows over half of the women in a survey reported their age to be less than what it actually was, complicating efforts to understand and address the problem.

Dr Kim Streatfield and his colleagues at icddr,b's Centre for Population, Urbanisation and Climate Change conducted the survey on 1,766 women aged from 15 to 29 years in Matlab region, asking them questions regarding age, schooling and marriage.

More than two-thirds (63 percent) misreported their age, the study says.

The Matlab demographic surveillance database offers a unique and important source of information for understanding early marriage because accurate dates of birth of women are known, making it possible to compare true ages at marriage with reported ages.

In the study, several factors were associated with misreporting, including education and socioeconomic status.

Women with little or no schooling tended to misreport their age by 2.5 to 3.0 years, while those with high school education misreported by only one year. Women from the poorest households underreported on average by more than two years, while those in the richest households misreported by about one year.

In addition, the older a single woman was, the more she reduced her actual age. As actual age approached 30, under reporting approached 5 years, say researchers.

The issue of dowry may also be important, since dowry demands of a bride's family tend to increase with a women's age and so families either marry off their girls early while dowry is still relatively low or reports the female's age to be less than what it actually is.

In the study the women whose families had paid dowry under-reported their ages at marriage by 1.64 years on average, compared to 0.55 years for women whose families had not paid dowry.

"If under reporting is intentional then it is a greater challenge to obtain accurate age data in national surveys like demographic health surveys," said Dr Streatfield.