Investigating the Socio-Economic Factors Influencing Women's Age at Marriage during the Last Three Decades

The main objective of this paper is to study the trends of women’s age at marriage and socio-economic factors influencing it during the years 1976‌2006 at the province level in rural and urban areas. First, the theories and background of the subject were reviewed. Then, the censuses of the years 1976, 1986, 1996, 2006 were used and through SPSS software, relevant indicators were estimated. Multiple regression analysis was carried out to analyze the socio-economic determinants of the mean age at first marring for women. The results show that women’s mean age at marriage increased more than one year in urban and rural areas during the last three decades. In addition, there were no considerable differences between women’s mean age at marriage in urban and rural areas. Some of the most important influential factors during the last three decades are unemployment rate, women’s economic participation rate, higher education rate and literacy rate.