THE AGE TO MARRY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3556, 30 October 1926, Page 3

THE AGE TO MARRY.

custom; in new Zealand,

studying the ages at which people marry, the greatest attention is naturally focussed upon youth and old age,” states a report on the vital statistics of New Zealand for the year 1925, which has just been issued from the Census and Statistics Office. “Taking brides and bridegrooms separately it is found that of the persons married in 1925, no fewer than 1831 brides (or nearly 18 per cent, of all brides) and 3(166 bridegrooms (3.J per cent.) were under 21 years of age. In three cases the bride had not attained her fifteenth birthday, in 10 cases she was between the age of 15 and 16 and in 64 eases between 16 and 17. The youngest age for bridegrooms in 1925 was between 17 and 18, there being 10 cases in which the groom had only attained his seventeenth birthday. Forty-six of the grooms were between the ages of 18 and 19 at marriage. “At the other end of the list 829 bridegrooms and 355 brides were of 45 years and over, these figures representing 8 per cent, and 3 per cent, respectively of the totals. Sixty-three per cent, of the bridegrooms and 78 per cent, of the brides were under 30 years of age. “The dissimilarity between the ages of manned couples is a subject of much comment, and the figures for 1925 provide some interesting data for such a study. The table of ages of persons married gives a detailed view .of the relative ages of persons married during 1925. Of 9,712 women under the age of 40, who married in 1925, 7,150 were definitely shown to have mai*ried men older than themselves, 1,701 married men of a younger age while in the remaining 861 cases age at last birthday of both the bride and the bridegroom was shown to have been the same.

“Dealing with individual ages it is found that age 25 held pride of place with bridegrooms and age 21 with brides. The latter has remained unaltered for many years, but in the case of bridegrooms, except for the four years prior to 1925, when it remained at 24, what may be termed the most popular age has varied considerably. “The average age at marriage in 1925 was 30.39 for bridegrooms, and 26.56 for brides, the medium age being—grooms 27j brides 24.

“The number of marriages registered in Ne.w Zealand during 1925 was 10,419, this total representing an advance of 160 over the previous year. It is, however, 132 below the average of the fivei preceding years. The marriage rate of 7.84 per 1,000 of mean population is slightly lower than that for 1924 (7.90) and 0.64 per 1,000 less than the preceding five-yearly average. The rate for 1925 is also considerably below the average of the fifteen years immediately preceding the war, and, omitting the war and post-war years, it is necessary to go back to 1901 to find a lower rate (7.83) than that recorded in 1925.”