In Jane Austen’s time, a 27-year-old woman might have been considered an “old maid” – too old to marry – and a burden to her family. These days a women who gets married at the age of 27 would be younger than average in many countries, according to World Bank data.

Of course, much has changed since the early 1800s: life expectancy was around 40 years in the United Kingdom, now it’s over 81 years.

South Africa doesn’t have the oldest brides in Africa, according to the World Bank’s data. In Namibia, the average age of marriage for women is 30, the oldest on the continent.

We used the World Bank data so we could compare countries, but it is a little out of data. The latest data (2023) from Statistics South Africa puts the median age of first-time brides in South Africa at 33.

In high-income countries, like the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, women marry in their 30s.

In China and India women marry in their early 20s and in parts of Africa, brides are even younger, for example, women in Mali and Mozambique marry at an average age of 19.