8.5 Marriage before age 18 8.6 (a) Women age 20- 49 years (b) Men age 20- 49 years (c) Men age 20- 54 years Young people age 15- Percentage of young people aged 15 19 years currently 19 years who are married or in union married or in union (a) Women (b) Men 8.7 8.8a Polygyny Spouse age difference 8.8b Percentage of people who were first married or in union before age 18 32.8 3.7 3.9 24.5 1.7 Percentage of women who are in a polygynous (a) Women age 15 - 49 years 10.1 (b) Men age 15 - 49 years 3.8 (c) Men age 15- 54 years 4.1 Percentage of young women who are married or in union and whose spouse is 10 or more years older, 19.9 17.5 (a) Among women 15 - 19 years (b) Among women age 20 - 24 years Note: (b) Standard MICS age group (c) Zimbabwe specific age group 38. The above statistics are not unique to Zimbabwe. According to reports in 2002, throughout the world 52 million girls below the age of eighteen (18) years were married. The average estimates are that 25 000 (twenty~five thousand) girls worldwide are married before the age of eighteen (18) years on a day to day basis. With estimation being that by the year 2012, 100 000 000 (one hundred million) girls before the age of eighteen (18) would have married. 39. Child marriages occur more frequently in South East Asia where 48% of women aged 15 - 24 have been married before the age of fourteen ( 14) years, 4 2% for Africa and 29% for Latin America and the Caribbean. 11