Question: “People get married later in life than they used to, right?”
Yes. In industrialized countries, the average age at which people marry has distinctly increased. The past 100 years have seen significant change, and it has only become more dramatic in recent decades.
How much of a difference are we talking about here? Let’s consider the USA in 1900. On average, women married at 22 and men at 26. Today, those numbers are 25 for women and 27 for men. Moreover, more Americans are choosing to remain unmarried than ever before — half the population, in fact!
The change is less dramatic is developing nations. In Bangladesh, for example, the average age of a woman at marriage is 16 and a man 21. (Compare that to Sweden, where women’s average is 30 and men’s 32.)
However, even in developing regions, marriage patterns have developed over time, particularly as relates to women. Factors such as education, feminism and birth control are leading women worldwide to postpone marriage.
