1. Background
Early marriage is internationally regarded as extremely disadvantageous for the psycho-social
and economic development of women, and currently is the subject of a sustained campaign to
eradicate this. Early marriage is apparently common in Zimbabwe, although the statistics are
unclear and misleading.
For example, A UNICEF report argues that 29% of women are married by age 18, and 5% are
married by age 152. The Zimbabwe censuses for 2002 and 2012 add more confusion to the
picture. As can be seen from Table 1 (below), the census data show an enormous increase in girls
married by age 19 between 2002 and 2012, a jump of 20%. Thus, according to the available
public data on Zimbabwe, early marriage dropped from 5% in 1999 to about 2% in 2002, and
then rose to 22% in 2012. This enormous rise deserves careful examination, more especially
since the period between 2002 and 2012 corresponds to dramatic changes in the political
economy of Zimbabwe, with consequent impoverishment on a vast scale.
Table 1: Percentages of girls aged 15-19, marital status
Never
Married
Married
Divorced/
Separated
Widowed
Not
Stated
Total
Number
2002 Census
98.19%
1.68%
0.10%
0.03%
0.00
736686
2012 Census
74.5%
21.9%
1.6%
0.1%
1.8%
712809
Adding to the difficulty in understanding the prevalence of early marriage, the 2012 Census
reports on the prevalence of ages of women at their first live birth do not show the age at which
they got married or gave birth to a stillborn child. As can be seen from Table 2, nearly 10% of
women were between 15 and 19 years, which presumably has some bearing on the prevalence of
early marriage, but this is only inferential.
Table 2: Percentage of Women by Age at First Live Birth and Current Age
[Source: ZimStat.2012]
Age at First
Live Birth
15 - 19
20 - 24
25 - 29
30 - 34
35 - 39
40 - 44
45 - 49
[Total: 2226983]
Median Age [20.6]
2
Current Age of Woman
15 - 19
9.4
105003
17.5
20 - 24
23.3
18.0
420639
19
25 - 29
21.0
26.4
25.5
517666
20.5
30 - 34
17.1
20.3
27.8
30.0
432412
20.7
35 - 39
13.3
16.6
20.6
30.8
37.3
345414
20.8
40 - 44
8.7
11.3
15.9
22.0
36.7
51.7
235386
21
45 - 49
7.1
7.4
10.2
17.2
26.0
48.3
100.0
170463
20.4
UNICEF (2005) Early Marriage. A Harmful Traditional Practice. A Statistical Exploration New York: United Nations
Children’s Fund.
5