−5.2 ptsImproving
2023–24Change on previous periodWest Bengal
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Maternal and childMulti-yearNational Family Health Survey
Percentage of women aged 20–24 who were married before age 18.
−5.2% (−13%) from 41.6% in 2019–21. A move in the better direction.
Provisional figure
| Period | West Bengal | India | Status | Where in the document |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023–24 | 36.4% | 20.1% | Provisional | NFHS-6 State/UT fact sheets, PDF p.135, "West Bengal - Key Indicators", indicator 16 "Women age 20-24 years married before age 18 years (%)", column NFHS-6 (2023-24) Total |
| 2019–21 | 41.6% | 23.3% | Reported | NFHS-6 State/UT fact sheets, PDF p.135, "West Bengal - Key Indicators", indicator 16 "Women age 20-24 years married before age 18 years (%)", column NFHS-5 (2019-21) Total; the publisher's restatement of NFHS-5 printed on the NFHS-6 sheet |
Percentage of women aged 20–24 who were married before age 18.
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is a household sample survey run by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. NFHS-6 interviewed 679,238 households, 716,397 women and 100,977 men in two fieldwork phases (28 May 2023 – 26 Feb 2024 and 7 Feb 2024 – 31 Dec 2024), using a two-stage sample designed for national, State/UT and district estimates, with height, weight, blood pressure and random blood glucose measured by trained health investigators. Every value is a weighted survey estimate, a percentage of the stated population group, not a count of services. NFHS-6 indicator 16, under 'Marriage and Fertility': 'Women age 20-24 years married before age 18 years (%)'. Self-reported age at first marriage. Source: NFHS-6 fact sheet compendium, '<Place> - Key Indicators', indicator 16: the 'NFHS-6 (2023-24) Total' column for the 2023-2024 value and the 'NFHS-5 (2019-21) Total' column for the 2019-2021 value. The NFHS-5 figure is the publisher's own restatement printed on the NFHS-6 sheet (the original NFHS-5 State fact sheets are now behind a login on nfhsiips.in), and is cited as such. IHO stores totals only; the urban and rural NFHS-6 columns are not stored. Periods are stored as the national fieldwork windows: 2023-2024 (1 May 2023 – 31 Dec 2024) and 2019-2021 (17 Jun 2019 – 30 Apr 2021). Each State/UT was surveyed over a shorter stretch inside the NFHS-6 window (Appendix 2 of the compendium gives the dates; Kerala, for example, 4 Jul – 23 Dec 2023).
Describes marriages that took place up to about seven years before the survey, so it changes slowly. A social determinant of maternal and child health, not a health outcome. A survey estimate carries sampling error: IIPS publishes relative standard errors for India only (Appendix 1), so small differences between States, or between rounds for a small State or UT, may not be real. The NFHS-6 fact sheets are provisional ('The results presented in the NFHS-6 Fact Sheets are provisional'); IIPS's final reports may revise them, and IHO records any change as a revision. Values the fact sheet prints in brackets rest on 25–49 unweighted cases and are stored as low-sample (shown with a warning, never scored); values it suppresses with '*' (fewer than 25 cases) are not stored. Manipur was not surveyed in NFHS-6, so it has no 2023-2024 value, and IHO does not carry its NFHS-5 value forward.
No value in this series has been revised since the observatory first archived it.
India Health Observatory (2026). Women aged 20–24 married before 18, West Bengal, 2019–21 to 2023–24 [dataset]. Original data: International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, National Family Health Survey. https://indiahealthobservatory.com/india/west-bengal/child-marriage-women
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2 periods. Values exactly as published; nothing interpolated.
NFHS-6 prints its NFHS-5 value against the same indicator wording and footnotes, and the wording of this indicator did not change between the rounds. One design change affects every indicator: NFHS-6 selected urban first-stage units from the Urban Frame Survey blocks (2012-17) instead of Census enumeration blocks. Geography is the post-2020 map in both rounds (Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh separate; Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu merged). Not comparable with HMIS figures for similarly named services, which count facility reports rather than surveying households.
How signals are computed from this series: methodology.