Even as India recorded a continued decline in child marriage, data from the National Family Health Survey-6 (NFHS-6) for 2023-24 revealed that 20.1% of women aged 20-24 were married before turning 18, the legal age of marriage for women. The figure has fallen by just over three percentage points from 23.3% reported in NFHS-5 (2019-21), according to Times of India report.
Among men aged 25-29, 15.9% had married before the legal age of 21 years, reflecting a 17.7% decline compared with the previous survey period.
The survey also pointed to a reduction in gender-based violence. The share of married women aged 18-49 who reported experiencing spousal violence dropped from 29.2% in 2019-21 to 22.3% in 2023-24. However, the burden remained disproportionately higher in rural areas, where 24.4% of women reported such experiences, compared with 17.5% in urban India. In the previous survey, the corresponding figures were 31.6% for rural women and 24.2% for urban women.
Child marriage among women has steadily declined across successive NFHS rounds. The prevalence stood at 47.4% in 2005-06 (NFHS-3), fell to 26.8% in 2015-16 (NFHS-4), and has now reduced to 20.1% in 2023-24.
Despite the overall improvement, a significant rural-urban divide persists. The latest survey found that 23.3% of women in rural India were married before the age of 18, compared with 11.4% in urban areas. In NFHS-5, the figures were 27% and 14.7%, respectively.
A similar gap was observed among men. Nearly 19% of rural men were married before the age of 21, against 9.7% in urban India. In the 2019-21 survey, the corresponding figures were 21.1% for rural men and 11.3% for their urban counterparts.
The report also highlighted adolescent motherhood, noting that 6.7% of women aged 15-19 were either already mothers or pregnant at the time of the survey — virtually unchanged from the previous round.
On gender-based sexual violence, the survey showed that 0.7% of women aged 19-29 had experienced sexual violence before the age of 18, down from 1.2% recorded in the 2019-21 survey.
(With TOI inputs)
