Updated research gaps on ending child marriage and supporting married girls for 2020–2030

Objectives

The study aimed to review progress made in building the evidence base on child marriage since the 2015 research priorities were published. It sought to identify updated research gaps and priorities for 2020–2030 across four areas: prevalence and determinants, consequences, intervention effectiveness, and implementation research. It also aimed to propose ways to improve research coordination, translation, and uptake among global and country-level stakeholders

Findings

The authors report substantial growth in evidence on where child marriage occurs, how it is changing, and which factors drive it, with clearer documentation of regional patterns and key protective factors such as girls’ secondary education and household wealth. Evidence on consequences remains concentrated on maternal and perinatal health, with fewer studies on mental health, economic outcomes, and life-course impacts, especially for younger adolescents and in humanitarian settings.

Major gaps persist in sub-national and crisis-affected analyses; in understanding the timing of childbearing relative to marriage; in measuring marriage quality and empowerment; and in robust evaluations of specific and combined interventions, including their cost and cost-effectiveness and how to deliver them at scale. The paper also highlights limited evidence on delivery platforms, reaching the hardest-to-reach girls, roles of civil society in scale-up, and how investments, policies, and large programmes can be better documented and coordinated to advance ending child marriage and supporting married girls.

Recommendations

The authors recommend a more deliberate global and country learning agenda, including establishing research consortia and mechanisms that bring together researchers, funders, governments, UN agencies, civil society, and affected communities to co-set priorities and link implementation funding to clear research questions. They call for expanded implementation and effectiveness studies, with attention to costs, scalability, sustainability, equity, and the comparative value of single versus multi-component and systems-level interventions, including in humanitarian contexts.

They also urge investment in local research capacity, participatory action research with adolescents and communities, and better packaging and dissemination of findings through open-access publications and user-friendly products such as briefs, infographics, and help-desk style platforms, so that evidence can more effectively inform policy and programmes to end child marriage and support married girls.

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