A simple approach to measuring the share of early childbirths likely due to child marriage in developing countries

Quentin Wodon, Chata Malé and Adenike Onagoruwa

Forum for Social Economics, 2020, vol. 49, issue 2, 166-179

Abstract: Child marriage has large negative effects on the girls who marry early and their children, as well as communities and societies as a whole. Ending child marriage is a target under the Sustainable Development Goals, but investments to delay the age at first marriage remain limited in countries where child marriage is widespread. As part of a broader argument to make the economic case for ending child marriage, this article provides a simple approach for measuring the share of early childbirths likely due to child marriage in developing countries. This estimation matters because many of the negative impacts of child marriage on development outcomes for the girls who marry early and their children are through early childbirths—having a child before the age of 18 (for a mother), or being born of a mother younger than 18 (for a child). The estimates provided in this article suggest that most early childbirths in developing countries are likely due to child marriage.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/07360932.2017.1311799 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:fosoec:v:49:y:2020:i:2:p:166-179

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RFSE20

DOI: 10.1080/07360932.2017.1311799

Access Statistics for this article

Forum for Social Economics is currently edited by William Milberg, Dr Wolfram Elsner, Philip O'Hara, Cecilia Winters and Paolo Ramazzotti

More articles in Forum for Social Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().