| المستخلص: |
A female’s age at marriage affects her reproductive behavior and size of her fertility, and despite the measures taken by the Egyptian government to prevent Underage marriage, early marriage is still widespread in Egypt, based on data of survey of causes of (decrease/ increase) in births in 2021, which was carried out in cooperation between Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics and National Population Council, which included nine governorates (Port Said- Suez- Damietta- Qalyubia- Fayoum - Minya- Assiut- Sohag- Qena), which were selected based on rate of change in crude birth rate calculated between years (2015, 2019) for all governorates, about 26% of women participating in the study were married before reaching the age of 18, and this percentage increases to 33.3% in rural areas compared to 15.8% in urban areas. This study attempts to define social and economic characteristics of females who married early (less than 18 years), in addition to determinants of early marriage for selected governorates included in the survey sample, using binary logistic regression method. Main findings: 1. The highest percentage of married women under 18 years of age was in rural areas by 74.2% compared to 25.8% in urban areas. Thus, early marriage is three times more common in rural areas than in urban areas. 2. The largest percentage of married women under 18 years was in Fayoum Governorate, followed by Minea by 39.9% and 36.0%, respectively. 3. percentage of early married women with a primary or preparatory certificate was 48.1%, while percentage of those with a university qualification or higher was only 1.6%. In contrast, 98.4% of women with a university qualification or higher are married at age of 18 years and above. 4. Results of logistic regression showed that place of residence, governorate, educational status of wife, kinship relationship with husband and time period of marriage were significant, which increases probability of early marriage. results showed a high probability of early marriage in rural areas compared to urban areas, and that governorates of Fayoum and Minya are among the governorates in which early marriage is high compared to Port Said, which belongs to urban governorates, and that woman’s educational level has a negative effect on early marriage, existence of a kinship relationship between spouses increases possibility of early marriage and the older the time period of marriage, the higher the probability of early marriage, so that this possibility increased before the issuance of any laws criminalizing child marriage. Recommendations: 1. Careful follow-up of the phenomenon to know its prevalence levels to make evidence-based decisions. 2. Legislate the necessary laws to confront early marriage and work to activate the current laws. 3. Issuing the necessary laws to activate the compulsory basic education to eliminate the phenomena of non-enrollment and dropout from education, especially among females, which contributes to the delay in marriage between them. 4. The importance of increasing educational and economic opportunities for girls. 5. Social and behavioral change and awareness of the dangers of early marriage on the psychological and reproductive health of the woman especially in the countryside and the governorates of Upper Egypt.
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