Marriage patterns have implications for the status of women, their health and fertility. Hence, monitoring marriage patterns is one of the important activities of the Population Division. To this end, the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) has issued a wall chart entitled "World Marriage Patterns 2000", showing the most recent data on the timing and prevalence of marriage for 199 countries or areas.
The wall chart shows significant differences in the mean age at marriage between males and females and between regions. Men generally marry later than women throughout the world.