Youth Blame Weak Financial Status for Not Marrying

A large number of youth are reluctant to get married due to the weak financial status of the main family breadwinner (the father), a recent study by the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) has revealed.

While 74% of young people said they were not planning to get married because of their own joblessness or economic woes, 33.5% said they were reluctant to marry due to “financial incapacity” of the male head of the family.

They were responding to the question why they were not marrying despite being in the marriageable age, in a recent survey for a research project dubbed ‘Cultural Activities and Trends of Iranian Families’ by the SCI, Khabaronline reported.

Official marriage rates in the country clearly show that the number of people who tied the knot had declined over the past decade. While some experts believe this trend to be a result of a changing public psyche and mindsets worldwide, others blame it on individualism. Young participants blamed it on their own financial instability or that of their parents as the main reason for the problem.

Participants in the age group 18-35 were given the option to tick more than one answer for their unwillingness. After unemployment, 54.4% pointed to lack of consistent and secure permanent jobs, 54.1% named housing issues, 33.5% cited not having met the right person, and 20.8% said they were afraid of taking on serious household responsibilities.

This is the first time that “not having a well-to-do father” has been cited as the reason for the disinclination to get married.

The rate of marriage in Iran has been in the descending order for the fifth year in a row, causing concern among families and public authorities.

Economic problems have created obstacles to financial independence as well as attitudes with regard to matrimonial expectations.

“The changes in marriage criteria, cultural issues and most important, individualism which runs rife among the youth, has set the stage for many youngsters to delay marriage,” says Tahoura Norouzi, a family consultant.

An earlier survey by the Population and Family Health Office at the Health Ministry showed that marriage is the 7th priority on the list for youngsters after employment, education, home ownership and others.

Based on available data, 234,980 marriages were registered by Iran’s National Organization for Civil Registration during the first four months of the outgoing Iranian year (ends March 20) indicating a 2.2% decline compared to the corresponding period in the previous year when 240,329 couples tied the knot.

  Marriage Age Up

Annual surveys by the SCI reveal a pattern in which the rate of marriage each year is lower than the preceding year. The average marriage age for men has also increased from 6.7% in 2005 to 8.7% in 2014 and for women from 6.3% in 2005 to 11.2% in 2014.

There are 11.2 million people in the country of 80 million who are single. Experts say the young population in the marriage age has increased significantly as the baby boomers of the 1990s are now in their late 20s to mid-30s.

Until 2010, the rate of marriage was on the rise. Since then, however, the numbers have been falling and have decreased by 8% so far.

The rate of marriage will continue to fall as the generation born during the 1990s bypass the crucial marriageable age, experts warn. This may be a setback to the 2014 population policy to boost population growth rate which has seen a decrease to 1.3% now from 2.3% in 2011.