CRANK Research Spotlight: Cash and asset incentive schemes to address child marriage and support married girls

What this resource is for

To prevent child marriage and support married girls, the World Health Organisation (WHO) strongly recommends offering cash and/or asset incentives conditional on schooling as a broad strategy to increase educational attainment and reduce child marriage. This should be part of social protection interventions for the girls at most risk of child marriage.

In this Research Spotlight, we look at the evidence behind this recommendation, and the implications for policy and programmatic work and research. We also offer additional evidence, insights and practical tools to support implementation of such incentives.

The poster provides a summary of what incentive schemes work to improve child marriage outcomes, with key tools to put this into practice.

Why focus on incentive schemes and child marriage?

In almost every context, girls from the poorest households are at greatest risk of child marriage.[ii] Poverty often limits opportunities for girls, leading them and their families to see marriage as a way to improve their economic security.

Incentive schemes are often incorporated into child marriage prevention programmes or policies to mitigate some of the social and economic drivers of child marriage, or as light-touch interventions to enhance the outcomes of broader social protection programmes.[iii]

Depending on context, incentive schemes like conditional cash transfers, unconditional cash transfers and non-financial transfer schemes have the potential to reduce child marriage through:

1. Improving household economic security: By increasing a household’s ability to meet their basic needs, cash transfers can reduce the pressure to shift financial responsibility for girls onto a husband or partner’s household. They can also reduce girls’ motivation to seek economic security through marriage or high-risk sexual relationships, like transactional sex.[iv]
2. Encouraging investment in girls’ education: By reducing the opportunity cost of education – that is, the loss of potential (economic) benefits from a girl’s work or marriage – cash transfers can encourage parents to keep girls in school, which is protective against child marriage.
3. Creating marriage disincentives: Cash transfers that are conditional on delaying marriage have a direct impact on reducing the risk of child marriage, independent of other pathways.[v]

What incentive schemes work to improve child marriage outcomes?

1. Respond to context, using gender analysis to identify & mitigate risks:

• Use gender & power analysis to identify girls’ decision-making autonomy, local social & economic drivers, & direction of marriage transfers.
• Cover areas of high child marriage prevalence & include those most at risk/ever-married girls (e.g. the poorest, those affected by conflict/crisis). Support them to pursue their own objectives[vi] & access existing (state) cash transfer programmes[vii] & services.[viii]
• Consider who transfers are paid to & how to minimise violence/abuse.[ix] Increasing mothers’ assets may be most effective;[x] recurrent transfers can have greater impacts on marriage,[xi] health & wellbeing outcomes.[xii]
• Use complementary targeted interventions to avoid incentivising child marriage in dowry contexts.[xiii]
• Review humanitarian assistance registration processes (e.g. family size, spouses under age 18) to avoid putting girls at risk.[xiv]

2. Combined unconditional & conditional/labelled transfers for education:

• Only apply conditions on school attendance where adequate services are available.[xv]
• Include options for remedial, informal & vocational education.[xvi]
• Avoid punitive sanctions for non-compliance, especially for the poorest households.[xvii]
• Monitor conditions to identify the girls most at risk, and provide additional support/services.[xviii]

3. Integrate incentives into multisectoral, multi-level interventions for long-term change at scale:

• Pair incentives with education & gender-transformative “plus” components to address underlying norms & decision-making.[xix]
• Partner across sectors[xx] & offer complementary social & economic interventions & services (e.g. training for boys & men as “agents for change”,[xxi] gender-based violence case management,[xxii] financial orientation[xxiii]).
• Include specific objectives to reduce child marriage in state social protection & cash transfer schemes; incorporate cash transfers into national child marriage strategies.[xxiv] Collect & analyse data on child marriage & related pathways.[xxv]
• Promote policy coherence & cross-sectoral links, ensuring strong sub-national leadership.[xxvi]
• Work with community/place-based actors, women’s rights/women-led organisations to identify & address the structural, supply-side factors that limit girls’ opportunities; collaborate with governments, UN agencies & donors across sectors, at all levels.[xxvii]

Practical tools to support policy and programmatic work on child marriage and incentive schemes

• The CALP Network’s resource library, which includes their programme quality toolbox to support quality cash and voucher assistance programming.
• Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action guidance on designing cash and voucher assistance to achieve child protection outcomes in humanitarian settings.
• Plan International’s mini guide on designing adolescent-responsive cash voucher assistance programmes.
• Plan International’s step-by-step guidance on cash and voucher assistance programming.
• Save the Children’s guidance on child safeguarding for cash and voucher assistance.
• UNHCR’s guidance on promoting child protection outcomes through cash-based interventions.
• UNICEF’s response analysis tool for effective decision-making on the use of cash and voucher assistance for education outcomes in emergencies.
• UNICEF’s targeting guidance on cash and voucher assistance for education outcomes.