Working situation and social status affecting the age at first marriage in urban areas

Abstract

his research, indicating the working situations and social factors that affect the age at first marriage of urban people, aims to: 1) study the social factors associated with marriage, working situations and the age at first marriage in urban areas, and 2) study the influence of the working situations and social factors that affect the age at first marriage in urban areas. Survey and questionnaire were used in this study. The data were analyzed by using cross-tabulation, hierarchical regression and regression analysis. The samples are 400 Thai males and females between the ages of 15-59 who are married and working in Bangkok. The analysis of the marital working situations (in this research was measured by work satisfaction) and social factors that affect the age at first marriage included education, migration, occupation and family background. The work satisfaction, which is the important factor of this research, relates with statistical implication to the age at first marriage with positive relation tendency ( = .175), and the independent variables can explain the variation of the dependent variable - the age at first marriage of 41.1 percent. The personal factors can best clarify the variation of the age at first marriage. When using the regression Analysis, compared with male and female, it found that the dependent variable of male effecting on the age at first marriage comprised of the highest education before the first marriage, aternal age at first marriage, premarital government employee/ state enterprise employee before the first marriage and the premarital knowing period before the first marriage, which can explain the variation of the age at first marriage of 42.4 percent. The result in female, showed that premarital responsibility for family, the premarital knowing period before the first marriage, unemployment before the first marriage, highest education before the first marriage, the number of the migrations before the first marriage, premarital government employee / state enterprise employee before the first marriage has the relation with the age at first marriage, which can explain the variation of the age at first marriage of 48.3 percent. Furthermore, the variables effecting on the age at first marriage both in male and female are highest education before the first marriage, premarital government employee / state enterprise employee before the first marriage and the premarital knowing period before the first marriage. Therefore, it can be concluded that the work satisfaction is not fully the factor that influences the age at first marriage; on the other hand, social factors do more influence The suggestions from this research are that: 1) the compulsory education period should be prolonged, and married persons should be more educated, 2) the education-related departments can adopt the study results to create the curriculums in sex education and marriage life, by instructing adolescents to extend the premarital knowing period to the marriage, and 3) due to the fact that the populations with higher migration numbers are late marriage, there should thus be a way to instruct marriage knowledge or education to those with less migrations.