Even though marriage is not a direct component that affects population growth, but indeed marriage has a significant effect on fertility. According to the Indonesian Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS) 2007, the cases of early marriage in Indonesia have reached the 50 million mark, with the median age at first age of 19.1 years. From this figure, we can infer that the number of early marriages in Indonesia is still considerably high.
The major purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship of selected socio demographic characteristics namely current age of respondents, level of education, type of place of residence and religion of the youth and adolescents on desired and opined ages at marriage and ideal number of children, based on an original analysis of data from the Indonesia Youth and Adolescent Reproductive Health Survey 2007.
Bivariate and multivariate regression analyses have been done to analyse the relationships mentioned above.
Chi Square (X2) tests of association have been applied in order to investigate the strength of the relationship between any two variables (Pallant 2007, p. 212). For the multivariate analysis, logistic regression is used to examine the associations of the several independent variables with a preferred dependent variable representing whether a demographic characteristic such as age, type place of residence and religion has influenced the youth and adolescent to choose and perceive about what age they would be married and what numbers of children they would like to have.
In connection with the multivariate analyses, in order to avoid skewness of data the level of education of the respondent is omitted from the analyses considering that still large numbers of the respondents did not attain their higher level of education for that case.
The outcome of the bivariate analysed have exposed that the youth and adolescents (aged 15-24) believe the best age of marriage for a man should be in the range 25-29 years while for a woman the best age of marriage should be five years younger, i.e., 20-24 years. This undeniably indicate that the youth and adolescent basically accept as true that age of marriage either for man and woman should be at their older age (>20 years old). For the ideal number of children, the result also shows that Indonesian Youth and Adolescents in 2007 deem that having smaller number of children (0-2 children) is the better choice. The multivariate analysis has revealed that only two variables, namely religion and to some extent place of residence (rural-urban) significantly and strongly affect desired age at marriage and ideal number of children.