Marriage in late nineteenth-century Melbourne.

Abstract

"This article uses Melbourne [Australia] marriage certificates from 1866 to 1896 to compare urban and rural marriage trends and study the individual determinants of the timing of first marriage; on the whole, urban brides and grooms were likely to be younger than rural ones. Economic conditions, as measured by occupation, played a more important role in men's timing of marriage than in women's. The fact that prenuptial pregnancy led couples to marry several years before their peers suggests that family commitments and other personal, unmeasured, factors affected marriage age."