When observing the Gap Minder graphs, I noticed a trend between mean ages of first marriage for women and mean number of years in school for women between the ages of 15 to 44.  Overall the trending pattern was the higher the mean number of years spent in school the later woman tended to get married. When comparing this trend with a comparative study done by Josef Bruderl, “Education and Marriage”, some reasons for this trend were given. It says that marriage is delayed by the institution effect and once individuals graduate it is delayed by the human capital effect. The institution effect explains that both genders tend to not get married while attending an educational institute due to students being unprepared for adult roles, a majority of their time is spent with school related activities and that individuals feel the need to be able to financially support them self before getting married. The human capital effect which states that women are less likely to want to get married after an extended amount of time spent in school, since they tend to be more career driven and feel as though opportunities will be missed if they are married. In the gap minder display of this effect the highest average age of marriage of 33 corresponded to an average of 11 years in school. What was also interesting about this graph is that Canada had the highest average number of years in school for women at 14 years; Afghanistan had the lowest at only 0.6 years.

Works Citied

Burderl, Josef. Education and Marriage. Munich Institute of Sociology, May 1997. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.sowi.uni-mannheim.de/lehrstuehle/lessm/papers/marriage.pdf>.