Demographic and Health Surveys Methodology - Measure DHS

MEDIAN AGE AT FIRST MARRIAGEDefinitionMedian age in years when the women first lived with husband or consensual partner.A. Coverage: Women of all marital statuses.B. Median: Interpolated calculated median.CalculationA. Age at first marriage or first union: Difference between date when woman began living with firsthusband or consensual partner and date of birth of woman in completed single years (in the DHSstandard recode, this difference is already calculated—V511).B. Numerators: Number of women within single year of age categories. Women who have neverbeen married or lived in a consensual union are included in a separate category.C. Denominator is the number of women of all marital statuses. Ever-married samples denominatorsare adjusted by the all women factors.D. Numerators for each age category are divided by the same denominator and multiplied by 100 toobtain percents.E. Medians are calculated from cumulated single-year percent distributions of age at first marriageor consensual union. Median is linearly interpolated between the age values by which 50 percentor more of the women had married for the first time or begun living in a consensual union.Handling of Missing ValuesNot applicable—Dates of birth and age at first marriage or consensual union were imputed if missing.Notes and ConsiderationsSince the difference in woman’s birth dates and date she began living with first husband or partner aretruncated to years, the difference between them is taken as including up to next completed year of age(e.g., cumulated percent for women with a difference of 19 years actually includes all women below20 years of age at first marriage). Therefore, an adjustment is made to the interpolated median byincreasing the interpolated value by one year.Since the median is based on all women, including those who have never been married or lived in aconsensual union, there may not be a median for younger cohorts of women (since fewer than 50 percentof the cohort may have been married or lived in a consensual union).Guide to DHS Statistics 70 Updated September 2006