Sample Middle-Income Countries, by Earliest and Latest Data Years

TABLE 2.3 Marriage Rates of Working Women and FLFP Rates of Married Women in Sample Middle-Income Countries, by Earliest and Latest Data Years

Marriage rate, working female population Married FLFP rate Country Year Overall Apparel 36–45 years Overall 36–45 years Bangladesh 2005 79 56 73 30 33 2016 84 72 81 36 43 Cambodia 2007 50 28 66 47 48 2014 58 37 74 96 96

Egypt, Arab Rep.

2009 72 24 84 25 28 2015 67 31 84 24 25 pakistan 2008 71 42 85 24 27 2015 72 60 86 25 27 Sri lanka 2008 69 51 85 39 48 2015 72 59 86 38 47 Turkey 2011 67 45 79 28 36 2013 67 53 78 30 40 vietnam 2007 74 57 85 81 90 2015 77 73 87 81 91

Source: labor force survey data. Note: “Overall” marriage rates are of all working females only. Female labor force participation (FlFp) rates are estimated using the female married population only, calculated as the share of both employed and unemployed married females of working age (15–65 years) who are seeking a job.

available from the UNDP for our seven case countries, the female SMAM is lowest in Bangladesh (18.8 years) and highest in Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Pakistan, at 23.4, 23.3, and 23.0 years, respectively (table 2.4). In the United States, the female median age of marriage was 21.2 in 1920, but the SMAM reached 27.5 by 2010.1

These ages show that, in Bangladesh, women are getting married just slightly above the age when women finish upper-secondary education, and in Cambodia, they are doing so before the age when one would typically complete tertiary education. The latter explains the results of table 2.1, which shows that in Bangladesh and Cambodia, most women do not continue studying beyond lower-secondary education. (Pakistan also has low female educational attainment, but its relatively higher female SMAM might indicate explanations other than marriage.) Therefore, if women switch to childcare activities after marriage, the relatively young marriage age suggests that women are withdrawing from the labor market with few years of experience. The impacts of such decisions can complicate women’s reentry into the labor market later in life, halting the development of a career path.

In Egypt, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Vietnam, where the female SMAM is 22 years or more (about the average age women complete a college degree), the shares of women