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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Lebanon
Index
The protracted Civil War has made the task of conducting
empirical research on marriage habits almost impossible. Available
statistics indicate that familial and marital habits differ among
sects. Christian families tend to be smaller than Muslim-
-particularly Shia--families. According to a 1970 survey, the
average Lebanese Christian family excluding Maronites had 3.57
children, the Sunni 4.38, and the Shia 5.01. A striking aspect of
marriage habits in Lebanon, especially after 1975, was the impact
of recession on marriage. The high cost of living and housing and
the difficulty in finding employment caused men to marry later. In
the past, Lebanese men and women married at an early age, but in
the 1980s in Beirut the average age for marriage was 31 years for
men and 22.5 for women. Economic difficulties also forced more
families to resort to birth control, so that the size of the
average Lebanese family has declined appreciably.
A study conducted in 1983 indicated, however, that marriage was
common among the population of Greater Beirut, with only 10 percent
or fewer of the population remaining single at ages above forty.
The majority of females at age twenty-five or older were married;
a majority of males at age thirty or older were also married.
Moreover, very few adult males or females were separated or
divorced. The percentage of widows forty years of age and less was
considerably higher than that for males of the same age. Marriages
based on personal choices of the spouses as opposed to familyarranged marriages increased with the gradual elimination of
traditional boundaries between the sexes. However, family-arranged
marriages continued to be practiced across geographical and social
boundaries. They were preferred among the economic elite of the
cities as a means of preserving wealth and status within the same
extended family, or within the same social group.
One study conducted in the early 1980s on the impact of the war
on family structure concluded that there was a clear decline in
divorce. This probably occurred because of the huge costs involved:
payment of deferred dowry, alimony for children, and support of the
woman during the prescribed period during which she may not
remarry.
Data as of December 1987
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