Impact of Tuition‐Free Education Policy on Child Marriage and Early Childbearing: Does Secondary Matter More?

Pragya Bhuwania, Kate Huh and Jody Heymann

Population and Development Review, 2023, vol. 49, issue 1, 43-70

Abstract: Child marriage and early childbearing severely impact maternal and child health as well as long‐term economic outcomes. Given their continued high incidence, analyzing the feasibility of effective national interventions remains crucial. While cross‐sectional surveys and a few small‐scale randomized experiments suggest delays in marriage and childbearing associated with secondary schooling, the impact of policies that advance secondary school at a national scale is largely unknown. Using a quasi‐experimental research design, we examine whether making secondary school tuition‐free delayed marriage and childbearing. We use a difference‐in‐differences strategy that exploits the natural variation in the timing of policy rollout in five sub‐Saharan African countries. Using the Demographic and Health Surveys, we estimate the impact of the policy change by comparing changes in outcomes over the study period between girls who were exposed to the policy to those who were not. We find that tuition‐free secondary reduced the probability of marriage and childbearing before 15 and 18 years of age. We observed significantly larger effects associated with tuition‐free secondary over tuition‐free primary for all outcomes. Our findings show it is important to support tuition‐free secondary education as a policy instrument to delay marriage and childbirth, especially given current high rates and their long‐term health and economic consequences.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12538

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:popdev:v:49:y:2023:i:1:p:43-70

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0098-7921

Access Statistics for this article

Population and Development Review is currently edited by Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll

More articles in Population and Development Review from The Population Council, Inc.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().