Our World
in Data
Oxford Martin School logoOxford logoGlobal Change Data Lab logo
Data

Average age of women at marriage

See all data and research on:
Marriages & Divorces

What you should know about this indicator

The mean age at first marriage, defined as the mean age in years of marrying persons at the time of marriage. This measure is disaggregated by sex with separate averages for men and women. For Australia, New Zealand and the United States, median age at first marriage. For Mexico, data refer to all marriages and not only first marriage. For Canada, data include the legal union of two persons of the same sex in some provinces and territories from 2003 onwards, and in all of Canada from 2005 onwards. Data for New Zealand include civil unions. From 2007 onwards, data include those who transferred their civil union to a marriage. The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international law. Footnote for Turkey: the information in this document with reference to « Cyprus » relates to the southern part of the Island. There is no single authority representing both Turkish and Greek Cypriot people on the Island. Turkey recognizes the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Until a lasting and equitable solution is found within the context of United Nations, Turkey shall preserve its position concerning the “Cyprus issue”. Footnote for all the European Union Member States of the OECD and the European Commission: the Republic of Cyprus is recognized by all members of the United Nations with the exception of Turkey. The information in this document relates to the area under the effective control of the Government of the Republic of Cyprus.

Average age of women at marriage
Average age of women who got married this year for the first time.
Source
OECD (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
January 11, 2025
Next expected update
January 2026
Date range
1990–2021
Unit
years

Related research and writing

A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says Marriages and Divorces by Our World in Data

Marriages and Divorces

Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The OECD Family Database provides cross-national indicators on family outcomes and family policies across the OECD countries, its enhanced engagement partners and EU member states. It includes 70 indicators under four main dimensions: (i) structure of families, (ii) labour market position of families, (iii) public policies for families and children and (iv) child outcomes.

Retrieved on
January 11, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/oecd-family-database.html
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
OECD (2024). OECD Family Database.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Average age of women at marriage”, part of the following publication: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2020) - “Marriages and Divorces”. Data adapted from OECD. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-at-marriage-women [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

OECD (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

OECD (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Average age of women at marriage” [dataset]. OECD, “OECD Family Database - Mean age at marriage” [original data]. Retrieved February 16, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-at-marriage-women