Over 40% of girls married before age of 18 in Bangladesh, reveals Govt Survey

Over 40 percent of the girls in Bangladesh are married before the age of 18, says the Bangladesh Sample Vital Statistics 2022 conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. The survey conducted annually by the government revealed that the percentage of girls married before the age of 18 was 32.4 percent in 2021 which went up to 40.9 percent in 2022.

Similarly, the number of girls married before the age of 15 rose from 4.7 percent in 2021 to 6.5 percent in 2022. The survey also revealed that the divorce rate in Bangladesh doubled last year from 0.7 per thousand in 2021  to 1.4 per thousand in 2022. The migration rate to foreign countries from Bangladesh also increased substantially from 3 percent in 2021 to 6.6 percent in



2022.

The literacy rate improved to 76.8 percent during the same period. Close to 99.4 percent people had access to electricity and 98.8 percent of the population had access to sanitation. However, access to clean energy for cooking was low at 28.8 percent, revealed the BBS survey.

The survey revealed that the life-expectancy in Bangladesh marked an increase from 72.3 years in 2021 to 72.4 percent in 2022. However, the crude birth rate and the total fertility rate have increased from 18.8 percent to 19.3 percent and from 2.05 to 2.15 percent respectively between 2021 to 2022. The use of contraceptives has declined from 65.6 percent to 63.8 percent during the same period.