I’m curious what the qualitative description of child marriage usually looks like in these cases- I have two very rough mental images:
A 14 year-old girl learning very little at school/ barely attends school. She’s very unlikely to continue studying past the age of 16. Her (very low-income) parents struggle to continue supporting her and would rather she married earlier to reduce their burden and make a bit of bridewealth money (maybe to concentrate resources on another child). She gets married, her husband takes on responsibility for her (he might be more responsible/ caring than her parents), and her life outcomes don’t change much from if she were to get married at 17.
A 14 year-old girl is learning quite a lot at school. She dreams of going to college/ sixth-form/ university and could even afford to if she got a part-time job, but family/ cultural pressure leads her to get married early. She has a child at 15, is forced to stay in her village, and all of her plans go to waste.
Could it be that people like to imagine something more like the second scenario when the first is more common?
I think the “family/cultural pressure” to marry is very likely to be downstream of an unexpected pregnancy as a result of rape. I have never seen any estimates for for the percentage of girls in SSA for whom sexual initiation (for want of a better phrase) comes through rape, but anecdotally I wouldn’t be surprised if it were over 70% in many countries. Again “child marriage” is not the problem here, the problem is likely a) weak growth = less reason to delay marriage and build human capital and b) massive, endemic sexual violence that is just absolutely everywhere.
Thanks for this, really valuable work!
I’m curious what the qualitative description of child marriage usually looks like in these cases- I have two very rough mental images:
A 14 year-old girl learning very little at school/ barely attends school. She’s very unlikely to continue studying past the age of 16. Her (very low-income) parents struggle to continue supporting her and would rather she married earlier to reduce their burden and make a bit of bridewealth money (maybe to concentrate resources on another child). She gets married, her husband takes on responsibility for her (he might be more responsible/ caring than her parents), and her life outcomes don’t change much from if she were to get married at 17.
A 14 year-old girl is learning quite a lot at school. She dreams of going to college/ sixth-form/ university and could even afford to if she got a part-time job, but family/ cultural pressure leads her to get married early. She has a child at 15, is forced to stay in her village, and all of her plans go to waste.
Could it be that people like to imagine something more like the second scenario when the first is more common?
I think the “family/cultural pressure” to marry is very likely to be downstream of an unexpected pregnancy as a result of rape. I have never seen any estimates for for the percentage of girls in SSA for whom sexual initiation (for want of a better phrase) comes through rape, but anecdotally I wouldn’t be surprised if it were over 70% in many countries. Again “child marriage” is not the problem here, the problem is likely a) weak growth = less reason to delay marriage and build human capital and b) massive, endemic sexual violence that is just absolutely everywhere.