Dhaka: Misreporting is complicating the efforts to address early marriage challenge in Bangladesh, a new study by icddr,b reveals.

The study, recently published in the journal Asian Population Studies, shows over half of all women in a survey under-reported their age, complicating efforts to understand and address the problem of early marriage in the country.

Dr Kim Streatfield and his colleagues of icddr,b's Centre for Population, Urbanisation and Climate Change conducted the survey on 1766 women aged 15 to 29 years in Matlab region, asking them questions to do with age, schooling and marriage.

Over half the women were ever married, and more than two-thirds (63%) misreported their age, the study says. For example, for the 20 to 24 years' olds included in the survey who were currently married, the reported average age of their first marriage was 16.8 years, which is similar to national statistics documenting an average age of first marriage as 16.6 years for this age group.

However, when researchers cross-checked, the women's actual dates of birth as recorded in Matlab demographic surveillance database, it was revealed that their true age at first marriage was 18.6 years -- producing an average difference of almost two years between reported and actual ages at marriage.

The Matlab demographic surveillance database offers a unique and important source of information for understanding early marriage because accurate dates of birth of women are known, making it possible to compare true ages at marriage with reported ages.

In the study, several factors were associated with misreporting, including education and socioeconomic status.

Women with little or no schooling tended to misreport their age by 2.5 to 3.0 years, while those with high school education misreported by only one year. Women from the poorest households underreported on average by more than two years, while those in the richest households misreported by about one year.

In addition, the older a single woman was the more she under reported her actual age. As actual age approached 30, under reporting approached 5 years, say researchers.

The issue of dowry may also be important, since dowry demands of a bride's family tend to increase with a women's age and so families have an incentive to marry off their girls early while dowry is still relatively low or to under-report a girl's age.

In the study, in fact, the women whose families had paid dowry under-reported their ages at marriage by 1.64 years on average, compared to 0.55 years for women whose families had not paid dowry, which indicates the important role of dowry on misreporting of age at marriage.

These findings on misreporting have important implications for research and understanding of early marriage. ‘If under reporting is intentional,’ said Dr Streatfield, ‘Then it is a greater challenge to obtain accurate age data in national surveys like demographic health surveys.’