Final Report (PDF, 2132K) - Measure DHS

2. MARRIAGE AND OTHER DETERMINANTS OF FERTILITY2.1 Current Marital StatusIn the ODHS, marriage is def'med as including all stable unions regardless of the degree of formalrecognition. Respondents were first asked if they had ever been married or lived with a man, and if yes,whether they were currently married, living with a man, widowed, divorced or separated. In all agegroups, less than one percent of respondents reported themselves as living with a man; for that reason thecategories "married" and "living with a man" are combined and presented as "married" throughout thisreport.Table 2.1 shows the marital status of respondents at the time of the survey. Of all women aged15-49, 30 percent had never married, 67 percent were currently married and 3 percent were widowed,divorced or separated. These findings are similar to those of the National Demographic Sample Surveywhere the comparable statistics were 27, 69 and 4 percent, respectively.Table 2.1Percent Distribution of All Women by Current Marital Status, According toAge, ODHS, 1986Age of Never Living Total No. ofWomen Married Married Together Widowed Divorced Separated Percent Women15 - 19 88.6 9.7 0.6 O.0 0.3 0.8 I00.8 110920 - 24 40.i 57.2 0.7 0.0 8.0 2.0 100.0 56325 - 29 7.3 89.8 0.9 0.7 0.4 0.9 100.0 56030 - 34 0.0 98.2 0.0 1.3 0.2 0.4 100.0 54835 - 39 0.0 96.9 0.2 2.1 8.6 0.2 100.0 47840 - 44 0.0 95.2 0.2 4.4 0.0 0.2 I00.0 47845 - 49 0.0 88.9 0.2 9.6 0.2 I.I 100.0 477Total 29.7 66.8 0.5 2.1 0.2 0.8 I00.0 4213The marital status distributions by age group show that the percentage of never married women ishigh for women aged 15-19 (89 percent), decreases rapidly in age groups 20-24 and 25-29 (40 and 7percent, respectively) and is nil for women above age 30. The percentage of currently married women islow for women aged 15-19 (10 percent), increases rapidly, reaching 90 percent for women aged 25-29and remains high for women at older ages. At every age, a high percentage of women are either nevermarried or currently married, so the percentage widowed, divorced or separated is low (less than 5percent) for all age groups except 45-49.2.2 PolygynyPolygyny, the marriage of more than one woman to the same man, is common in Nigeria. Dataon this practice were collected by asking currently married women if their husbands had other wives.Table 2.2 shows that overall, 46 percent of currently married women are in a polygynous union, which is11