Stable marriage rates over 2010-2022— study

AMMAN — A detailed analysis conducted by the Higher Population Council (HPC) in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund indicated that marriage rates in Jordan remained unchanged over the period between 2010 and 2022.

The study, titled “Jordan’s Marital Dynamics: An Analysis from 2010 to 2022”, which was launched on Thursday, showed a decrease in marriages among relatives to 28 per cent, down from 56 per cent registered in 1990, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Friday.

As for widows and divorced individuals in all age groups for both men and women, the rate stood at 6 per cent among women and 4 per cent among men.

Widows constitute 49 per cent for those who are 60 years and older, while widowers did not exceed 7 per cent in 2022, according to the study.

As for polygamy, 7.3 per cent of married women between the ages of 15 and 49 are married to husbands who have other wives, which show that men usually marry other wives after divorcing the first one.

The figures also showed that 15 to 22 per cent of marriages registered between 2015 and 2022 were for divorced women, where divorced women who remarried in these eight years constituted 18.3 per cent of the total marriages.

Regarding the marital status of grooms for 2022, 73 per cent of marriages were registered for men who got married for the first time, while 18 per cent of marriages were for divorced men, 2 per cent for widowers and 7 per cent for men who were married to another wife (polygamy).

As for brides in 2022, 77 per cent of women got married for the first time, 22 per cent of women were divorced and 1 per cent of women were widows.

The study showed a slight increase of the average age for the first marriage among males, which increased from 26.9 years to 27.3 years and from 22.1 years to 22.7 years among females.

As for marriages of women before the age of 18, the study showed that the percentage went down from the highest rate of 16.6 in 2017 to 11.9 per cent in 2022, where Mafraq registered the highest rate nationwide with 21 per cent.

Commenting on the study, HPC Secretary-General Issa Masarweh said that the common talk among the public and media outlets about refraining from marriage is “baseless”.

In this regard, he noted that the increase in the numbers of those who have never been married is linked to the growing number of youth within the marriage age who have not married yet, rather than a decline in the overall percentage.