And no, it is NOT the Muslims, but rather India, where the incidence of child brides is the greatest. Because of the sheer size of India (2.1 billion people) and its high rate of child brides, India has the highest number of child brides. The numbers are staggering. In 2013, 47 percent of Indias women 20-24 years were child brides. Conservatively that means that, given at least half the women 15 and over were child brides, more than 210 million Indian women over the age of 15 were child brides. This is despite the legal age of marriage being 18 years. In recent times, fewer Indian girls are marrying before the age of 15, falling from 23.5 percent to 18.2 percent. However at the same time, rates of marriage have increased for girls in the 15-18 age group, increasing from 26.7 per cent to 29.2 per cent between the late 1990s and 2006.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 02:00:00 +0000
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