How does the Age of Marriage for Women Compare Worldwide?

Bangladesh is one of the countries with the youngest average age for women getting married for the first time — most women in Bangladesh marry for the first time when they're 18. This is almost 10 years younger than the global average, although it's not the country with the lowest average first marriage age in the world. In Chad and Mozambique, many women marry for the first time at age 17 or younger.

More facts about marriage:

• The average age of first marriage for people in developed nations is 27 years for men and 25 years for women; in developing nations, it is 24 years for men and 21 years for women.


• About three-fourths of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were first married between the ages of 15 and 19. Of the 20 countries with the highest rates of adolescent marriages, 15 are in Africa. The country with the highest rate of men married in their adolescence is Iraq, where about one-tenth of men marry before they turn 20.


• Among the countries with the oldest average age of first marriage are Sweden, Hong Kong and Spain, where both men and women tend to marry for the first time when they're about 32 years old.