Only 12m out of 24m eligible Ugandans are in Marriage of Some Form

The final report for the 2024 census enumeration exercise is out and it establishes newest and latest data on a number of things characterising the Ugandan population-including their marital status and exactly how many of them are married.

Overall, the 351 page report (whose contents are based on oral answers enumerators got during the actual enumeration exercise) establishes that 5 (50%) in every 10 Ugandans aged 18 years and above were married as of May 2024. Yet 1 in every 4 persons (basically 26.6%), aged 18 and more, was cohabiting-which means living/staying together without being formally or officially married.

The other marital status-related findings were as follows: 2.8% are divorced, 18.6% had never engaged in marital union of some sort (can basically be termed as singles as at May 2024) and another 0.7% said they were widowed. There was also another 0.7% who didn’t disclose their marital status because they weren’t comfortable doing so.

The report also indicates that 50.6% of the respondents, aged 18 years and more, said they were married and living in the resultant spousal relationship.

EXPLAINING THE CONTEXT:
The context to all this is that the above marital status-related findings relate to strictly to the fraction of Uganda’s 46m people who are aged 18 and above. At 18 years, one is presumed to be grown up enough so as to engage in responsible decision-making including decisions relating to marriage.

The latest census data shows that roughly 50% of Uganda’s population of 46m is aged 0-17 years. This simply implies that the remaining 50% (or 23m) comprises of those aged 17-18 and above. This can be broken down as follows: 24% who are youths aged 18-30 years, 21% who are adults aged 30-60 years and finally the older persons aged 60 years and above.

Now 50.6% of 23m (which is aged 18 years and more) comes to roughly 11.5m, which essentially is the number of those who revealed their marital status to the enumerators as being married.

19% of the 23m who said they had never been in any marriage comes to roughly 3.3m. The report categorizes this 19% (aged 18 and above) as not married and at the same time not among the 27% who are cohabiting. This automatically means they are single or in casual relationships which can’t be categorised as serious.

The report further shows that another 27% (roughly 5.8m) of the 23m, aged 18 years and above, are cohabiting whereby they are living together without ever engaging in any formal marriage procedures.