According to the doctoral work of Grace Kumchulesi, who graduates with her PhD from UCT's School of Economics this week, the marriage rate of the country's African women is on the decline.

The research, which won Kumchulesi a poster award at the May conference of the Population Association of America in San Francisco, US, is based on an analysis of the marriage rates for African women aged between 15 and 49 years.

She found that those rates have dropped from 35% in 1994 to 31% by 2006. One interesting observation from Kumchulesi's analysis was that the odds of marriage for women increase with age - in other words, the older the women, the more likely they are to marry.

Kumchulesi hails from the University of Malawi.