Harming to signal: child marriage vs public donations in Malawi

Summary & Objectives

The paper aimed to explain why child marriage persists in Malawi despite most parents saying they oppose it, focusing on the role of social image concerns. It set out to test whether parents marry off under-age daughters partly to protect their reputation in communities where child marriage is common, and whether a public donation drive that makes charitable behaviour visible can offer an alternative way to build social image and thereby reduce child marriage.

Findings

The study showed a clear gap between attitudes and behaviour: only about 5% of parents said women should marry before 18, yet around 42% of girls did so. In villages with high child marriage prevalence, families that did not marry off under-age daughters were perceived as less altruistic, reciprocal and trustworthy, confirming that conforming to the practice boosts social image. A public maize donation drive increased charitable giving in treated villages, especially in places where child marriage was common and among those with a history of child marriage, and this effect persisted over time.

One year after the intervention, girls in treated villages had roughly 30% lower rates of marriage and teenage pregnancy, fewer school dropouts and lower participation in harmful initiation rituals, with larger effects in high-prevalence villages. Independent call-centre data and additional experimental arms ruled out simple income effects and supported the interpretation that shifting how people can signal pro-sociality, rather than redistribution, was driving the change.

Recommendations

The authors recommend designing interventions that deliberately create visible, socially valued alternatives to harmful practices as a way to reshape social image incentives. Public, low-cost opportunities for charitable acts, such as community donation drives, can be used to weaken inefficient norms like child marriage, particularly in settings where such practices remain widespread but privately unpopular. They suggest that future programmes and research should focus on how to scale similar social-image-based strategies, adapt them to different contexts and extend them to other harmful traditions that undermine children’s human capital.