Trends in child marriage and new evidence on the selective impact of changes in age-at-marriage laws on early marriage
Objectives
The study aimed to describe cohort trends in child marriage across six low- and middle-income countries and to estimate whether increases in the legal minimum age at marriage reduced the share of girls entering a first union before age 18. It combined DHS and MICS survey data with policy information from the PROSPERED database and used regression discontinuity methods to assess the impact of age-at-marriage law changes on early marriage.
Findings
Across Benin, Mauritania, Kazakhstan, Bhutan, Nepal and Tajikistan, child marriage remained common, with only modest cohort declines in most countries and around one third of women still marrying before 18 in several settings. Changes in minimum-age-at-marriage laws showed no clear effect on early marriage in Benin, Mauritania, Kazakhstan and Bhutan, while in Nepal and Tajikistan some reductions appeared but were sensitive to model specification and time window and fell far short of eliminating early marriage. Overall, the analysis found insufficient and inconsistent evidence that raising the legal age at marriage alone has meaningfully reduced early marriage in these countries.
Recommendations
The authors recommend that legal reforms to increase the minimum age at marriage be accompanied by stronger enforcement, monitoring and removal of exceptions that allow early unions, as well as efforts to address informal marriages. They argue that governments and partners should complement law change with broader policies that expand girls’ educational opportunities, reduce poverty and tackle gendered social norms, drawing on evidence that incentives for schooling and multi-pronged interventions are more effective in delaying marriage and improving girls’ life trajectories
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