Rising age at marriage and its contribution to fertility decline in Sri Lanka have been studied by several scholars (Wright 1968; Fernando 1975; Trussed 1980; Langford 1981; McCarthy 1982a; Smith et al. 1983). Alam and Cleland (1981) indicated that up to 1970 about 60 per cent of the decline in fertility in Sri Lanka was attributable to marriage postponement, but that during 1971-1975 the contribution of changes in nuptiality to the decline in the total fertility rate fell to 46 per cent. Kirk (1969) has described Sri Lanka as a sort of Ireland in Asia, where late marriage has reduced fertility. Smith (1981) and Caldwell et al. (1989a) identified Sri Lanka as the leader in Third World Asia’s change in marriage patterns, and showed that by the mid-1970s Sri Lankan females were marrying not at puberty but a decade later.
The marital structures of the female and male populations over 15 years of age at successive censuses in Sri Lanka indicate trends towards higher proportions single and lower marital dissolution caused by widowhood (Table A l.l). In fact divorce and widowhood rarely occur during the childbearing years, and when they do occur are largely compensated for by remarriage.
Marriage in Sri Lankan society is monogamous and is the institution within which almost all fertility occurs. The incidence of permanent celibacy has always been low, about 7 per cent for males and 3-4 per cent for females11 (Table 1.3). Although these percentages have not changed much over the last 40 years, nuptiality patterns have changed significantly.
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Table 1.3 Percentages of Sri Lankan Males and Females Never Married by Age at Selected Dates. A ge 1946 1953 1963 1971 1975 1981 1982 15-19 75.3 75.7 Fem ales 85.0 89.5 9 3 .2 90.1 89.3 20-24 29.4 32.5 41.3 53.1 6 0 .6 55.3 55.0 25-29 11.6 12.8 17.1 2 4 .6 31.9 30.4 28.3 30-34 6.6 7.5 8.3 10.9 13.7 15.8 15.5 35-39 4.3 5.4 4 .8 5.6 5.8 8.9 8.8 4 0-44 4.1 5.0 4.3 4.3 4 .6 5.9 5.8 4 5 -4 9 3.4 4 .4 3.9 3.6 2.1 4.5 2.9 15-19 98.7 98.7 99.0 M ales 99.4 99.7 99.0 n .a 20-24 80.5 83.5 84.7 86.3 88.5 83.7 n .a 25-29 43 .4 45.4 50.5 52.6 57.5 51.1 n .a 30-34 22.4 21.7 26.1 25.5 26.8 2 5 .6 n .a 35-39 12.5 11.8 13.1 13.7 12.2 13.2 n.a. 4 0 -4 4 9.3 8.7 10.4 9.4 6.7 8.6 n.a. 4 5 -4 9 7.6 7 .6 7.2 7.9 7.1 7.1 n.a.
Source: Figures for 1946, 1953, 1963, and 1971 are from United Nations (1976a), figures for 1975 are from Department of Census and Statistics (1978b), figures for 1981 are from Fernando (1985), and figures for 1982 are derived from the SLCPS household data tape.
Note: 1975 is the SLFS, 1982 is the SLCPS, other dates are census years.
A steady increase in the proportion aged 15 and over who have never married has been observed in Sri Lanka for some time. The proportion of women aged 15-19 never married increased from the already high figure of 75 per cent in 1946 to 90 per cent in 1981. The next age group (20-24) saw an even sharper increase in the proportion never married from 29 per cent to 55 per cent over the same period. The change among males has been less dramatic, indicating a marked narrowing of the age difference between husbands and wives. The singulate mean age at marriage for females increased by four years during 1946-82, from 20.7 years to 24.7 years. Over the same period there was barely any increase at all for men, so that the sex differential dropped from over 6.3 years in 1946 to 3.5 years in 1981 (Table 1.4).
Table 1.4 Singulate Mean Age at Marriage, Sri Lanka, 1946-1982 C e n s u s y e a r S in g u la t e m e a n a g e a t m a rr ia g e M a le F e m a le D if f e r e n c e 1 9 4 6 2 7 .0 2 0 .7 6 .3 1 9 5 3 2 7 .2 2 0 .9 6 .3 1 9 6 3 2 7 .9 2 2 .1 5 .8 1 9 7 1 2 8 .0 2 3 .5 4 .5 1 9 7 5 ( S L F S ) 2 8 .4 2 5 .1 3 .3 1 9 8 1 2 7 .9 2 4 .4 3 .5 1 9 8 2 ( S L C P S ) n .a . 2 4 .7 n .a .
Source: Figures for 1946 to 1971 are from United Nations (1976a), figures for 1975 are from Department of Census and Statistics (1978b), and figures for 1981 are from Department of Census and Statistics (1986a). The female figure for 1982 is derived from the SLCPS household data tape.
Estimates of the proportions never married among females aged 15-19 to 25-29 for the 1975 Sri Lanka World Fertility Survey (SLFS) are considerably higher than those from the 1971 and 1981 censuses. The timing of the SLFS was unfortunate: the insurgency, economic hardship and famine conditions in the country in the early 1970s influenced its findings on the age pattem of nuptiality (Fernando 1985; Caldwell et al. 1989a).
Cumulative proportions ever married by exact single years of age estimated for five- year age cohorts confirm the trend towards later marriage (Figure 1.3). However, marriage remains almost universal; around 90 per cent enter marriage before reaching age 35 (Table A 1.2). For some cohorts the declining trend in proportions ever married reversed or did not continue beyond certain ages. For instance, from exact age 19 there is really no difference to be observed between trend lines for age cohorts 25-29 and 30- 34 in Figure 1.3.
As Trussed (1980) asserted, among young age groups covered by the 1975 SLFS there were a considerable number of women still unmarried at the time of the survey, and it was a difficult task to determine exactly when they would marry. The same situation is evenly apply in the 1980 decade. To overcome this problem an attempt was made to fit Coale’s nuptiality model (Coale 1971; Coale and McNeil 1972) to the 1982 Sri Lanka
Contraceptive Prevalence Survey (SLCPS) data to obtain a better analysis of the age pattern of first marriage in Sri L a n k a . 12
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Figure 1.3 Proportions of Women Ever Married bv Exact Ages for Five-year Age Cohorts, 1982 SLCPS' Cohort - 20-24 25-29 - 30-34 - 35-39 40-44 .... 4 5 .4 9 Exact age
Estimates from the model clearly show that female mean age at marriage in Sri Lanka has increased over the cohorts and stagnated at just below 24 years among the youngest cohorts (Figure 1.4). However, women aged 30-34 had an artificial increase in their mean age at marriage. Why is such a smooth trend disturbed at this cohort? It could be debated whether the model fits the Sri Lankan data well. There is no way of deciding unambiguously whether the true nuptiality pattem conforms more to the observed data or to the model. However, a test of goodness of fit, integrated into the model by Rodriguez and Trussell (1980), indicates that overall the model fits the SLCPS data well at the .05 level (Table A 1.3).
12 C oale’s m odel is a function o f three parameters: a, the age at which a substantial number o f first marriages begin to occur; k, the speed at which marriage takes place; and c, the proportion who eventually marry (Coale and M cN eil 1972). The original version of the m odel was further developed by Rodriguez and Trussell (1980), w ho m odified the first tw o parameters so that they are more readily interpretable as the mean and standard deviation o f the age at first marriage. They also wrote a computer program (NUPTIAL) for finding maximum likelihood estimates o f the three parameters o f the m odel (N ew ell 1988:167-170).
M ea n