Socioeconomic Differential of Female Age at Marriage in Iran: Comparative Study of Female Youth at Marriageable Age and Female Married 15-49 Years Old

In recent decades, female age at first marriage in Iran has postponed considerably and the average age at marriage rose from 19.7 to 23.0 between 1976 to 2016. The present paper investigate determinants of the female age at first marriage in Iran. Secondary data come from a national cross-sectional survey carried out in 2014 among two representative sample of female used in the study: a). A sample of female youth in the verge of marriage, and b). a sample of married female 15-49 years old (with a sample size of 6500 respondents for each sub-sample). According to the findings age at marriage show a J-shaped pattern (and in some cases, near to U-shaped pattern) by the most important socioeconomic variables under the study. Therefore, those female with the lowest social and economic position based on the most socioeconomic variables examined here (such as education, income, employment status, level of provincial economic development and…), married at later ages on average. Afterwards, female age at marriage decline to the lowest values at the middle socioeconomic position and again raise to its highest values for respondents with highest socioeconomic position. The main message of our results is that those policies which could help to reduce socioeconomic inequalities and increase level of social justice, will able to facilitate marriage condition in Iran.