Page 33 - IJPS-11-3

International Journal of

Population Studies

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Marital dissolution in India: Patterns and

correlates

1
Harihar Sahoo * , Manas Ranjan Pradhan 2 , Manoj Alagarajan 2 ,
Madhurima Sharma 3 , and Sunandita Das 1
1 Department of Family and Generations, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai,
Maharashtra, India
2 Department of Fertility and Social Demography, International Institute for Population Sciences,
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
3 Department of Population and Development, International Institute for Population Sciences,
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Abstract

The rate of marital dissolution in India is relatively low from a global perspective;
however, the rate of separation exceeds that of divorce. This study aims to estimate
the prevalence, trends, variations, and determinants of marital dissolution in India. We
employed the approaches of descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression
to examine the relationship between marital dissolution and its correlates among
ever-married women in India. The findings revealed that urban women are more
prone to marital dissolution, with higher rates observed among the impoverished
*Corresponding author: and childless compared to their counterparts. Risk factors such as infertility, poverty,
Harihar Sahoo
(harihar@iipsindia.ac.in) child marriage, the educational gap between spouses, urbanization, and spousal
violence contribute significantly to marital disintegration. Special attention should
Citation: Sahoo, H., Pradhan,
M.R., Alagarajan, M., Sharma, M. & be directed towards these segments of the population to promote marital stability.
Das, S. (2025). Marital dissolution
in India: Patterns and correlates.
International Journal of Population Keywords: Marital dissolution; Divorce; Separate; India; Region
Studies, 11(3): 27-41.
https://doi:10.36922/ijps.1681
Received: August 25, 2023
1st revised: November 30, 2023 1. Introduction
2nd revised: December 22, 2023 Marriage in India reflects a lot of the ambiguity and inconsistencies that define a
traditional society transitioning into a modern one (Sonpar, 2005). The previous
Accepted: January 10, 2024
decades have observed a steady increase in the age of marriage for women worldwide,
Published online: May 10, 2024 accompanied by a rise in delayed marriage and singlehood in both developed and
Copyright: © 2024 Author(s). developing countries. In spite of the universality of marriage, its types and customs differ
This is an Open-Access article across communities due to diverse religious and cultural practices (Kaur & Singh, 2013).
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution Marriages may terminate either through divorce or separation. Divorce typically refers
License, permitting distribution, to the legal dissolution of a formally contracted marriage, while separation refers to the
and reproduction in any medium, informal dissolution of either a formal or informal marriage.
provided the original work is
properly cited. Separation and divorce are becoming increasingly common in many parts of Asia.
Publisher’s Note: AccScience In East Asia, except for China, marriage rates have decreased, with divorce rates briefly
Publishing remains neutral with surpassing those observed in OECD nations (Dommaraju & Jones, 2011). During the
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional Vedic period in India, marriage was viewed as an institution that could not be dissolved,
affiliations. with this sentiment persisting through the Buddhist era. However, during the middle

Volume 11 Issue 3 (2025) 27 https://doi:10.36922/ijps.1681