43
The figures for males show that a significant percentage married late. Thus, while about 14-17% of males were married in both Northern District and in the Southern District land population by the age of 17, only a quarter were married by 18, half by about 23 or a little later, and even by the late 20s only two-thirds were married. Even as late as the late 30s 10-15% of males were still unmarried. The 1921 Census suggests that eventually every villager married. All males aged over 80 and all females aged over 75 (except one) in Northern District, all males over 70, and all females over 75 in the Southern District land population, and all males over 50 (except one), and all females over 35 (except one) of the Southern District floating population are shown as married, or widow(er)s. There is likely to be some error here, as both the 1911 and 1921 Censuses and oral evidence make it certain that there were a few Buddhists in the area, who never married. It is probable that these monks and nuns were just ignored in the Married State figures in the 1921 Census. However, there does seem to be a real difference between the figures for the land populations and the floating population. In the floating population, it seems that there were very few young marriages, for over half of both men and women married between 18 and 24, but that, on the other hand, by the late 30s all were married, whereas, for the land populations, while there were more men married at below 18, up to a third of males were still unmarried by the late 30s. The reason for the late marriage of so many men is, without doubt, the temporary young adult male emigration/immigration into or from the area.
Another point of interest is the varying ratios between married and single men and women in the various social groups. Ignoring widow(er)s and infant marriages, the figures show significantly more married women than married men recorded in Northern District in both 1911 and 1921, but significantly more married men than married women in Southern District in 1921. This, again, is a factor of the temporary emigration of adult males from Northern District, and the temporary immigration into Southern District of adult males. While some of the temporary migrants waited to marry until they returned to and settled down in their home village at the age of 30 or 40, others clearly married before leaving, and left the wife at home in the native village while the husband went off to make money. Details are given in Table 17; the differences in the statistics for Northern District between 1911 and 1921 are probably due to the effects of the Ching Ming Festival in