What's the worth of a promise? Evaluating the longer-term indirect effects of a programme to reduce early marriage in India
Summary & Objectives
The paper evaluates the long-term effects of Haryana’s Apni Beti Apna Dhan (ABAD) conditional cash transfer, which promised a lump-sum to girls who remained unmarried until 18. It examines whether this “promised” transfer improved beneficiaries’ educational attainment, labour-force participation, empowerment, marital timing and quality, and maternal and child health, using multiple large-scale surveys and a triple-difference design.
Findings
ABAD led to a statistically significant increase of about 0.7 years of schooling and higher completion of secondary and higher secondary education, but had no effect on women’s labour-force participation, type of work, time spent in paid work, empowerment, or maternal and child health outcomes. The programme reduced child marriage before 18, yet increased the probability of marrying at 18–19, so overall marriage was postponed only to the minimum eligible age rather than substantially delayed. Evidence suggests that parents used the transfer and girls’ extra schooling to secure higher-status grooms (e.g. with cement houses and land), indicating that the scheme did not alter underlying gender norms and may have been absorbed into dowry-like marriage strategies.
Recommendations
The authors argue that promise-based CCTs tied mainly to age at marriage, with weak or no education conditionalities, are insufficient to transform women’s labour outcomes or autonomy, and risk being repurposed to reinforce existing marital norms. They recommend complementing such schemes with policies that actively shift gender norms through behavioural interventions, expand girls’ skills, and create incentives and opportunities for female work participation, so that educational gains translate into genuine improvements in women’s economic and social wellbeing rather than only better-positioned marriage
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