Estimation of mean age at first marriage: use of a simple mathematical model.

"The present paper is an attempt to introduce a simple mathematical model to describe the age pattern of proportion never married women. The underlying model was found to give fairly close fit to an observed set of data of some 17 WFS [World Fertility Survey] countries. A mathematical formulation was then suggested in terms of the parameters in the model to estimate the mean age at first marriage. The mean ages obtained under the approach agreed quite closely with those obtained by Hajnal's method. The agreement between the estimates of ever married proportions obtained by the suggested model and...Coale's nuptiality model appeared also to be satisfactory."