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Early marriage and education

Early marriage and education

Rachel Hatch, Research Associate, Education Policy and Data Center  

In an upcoming research paper, EPDC explores the impact of marriage on school attendance, finding that young women who marry early - defined as marriage before the age of 18 - are more likely to be out of school than their unmarried peers. With these educational risks in mind, we explore the prevalence of early marriage in order to better understand the scope of the issue. To do so, we use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) from 2008-2011 for the following nine countries in sub Saharan Africa: Burundi, the Republic of Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.  

Figure A displays marriage rates with 95% confidence intervals by country, revealing dramatic differences in marriage rates across the various countries in the region. Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi have rates higher than the regional average of 12.3%, and, notably, with 29.1% of young women aged 14-17 married, early marriage rates are nearly twice as high in Mozambique as in either Zimbabwe or Malawi. In Kenya, the Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda, marriage rates are all below 10% though these rates are still problematic given the risks to health, safety, and educational opportunities that research and advocacy groups link to early marriage. Of the nine countries we consider in the analysis, marriage rates are lowest in Rwanda at 0.3%, indicating, positively, that hardly any young women there marry early. A 2012 UNFPA report cites Rwanda as a country that has experienced a dramatic decrease in early marriage, and therefore it would be a worthwhile case study for researchers and policy makers looking to examine what works in reducing the incidence of early marriage.

Figure A. Marriage Rates by Country, Young Women Ages 14-17, with 95% Confidence Intervals

In Figure B, we look at marriage rates across the nine countries in our analysis to see how marriage rates vary across different demographic groups, specifically wealth quintiles, individual age groups, urban or rural residence, and educational attainment. Figure B shows that, among wealth categories, marriage rates are most prevalent among women in the poorest quintile (18%) and that rates of married young women drop with increases in wealth. Except for young women from the wealthiest quintile (with marriage rates at 5.2%), marriage rates are above 10% for all wealth quintiles. Looking at individual age groups, the percentage of young women who marry young increases steadily with age, ranging from 3% of 14 year olds to nearly a quarter of 17 year olds. Marriage rates also vary by locality, and – at 13% – are higher in rural communities than in urban ones (10.1%). A caveat is important, however. While, globally, young women in rural areas are typically at greater risk of marrying early (and of leaving school early or never attending) and our analysis supports this general trend, patterns tend to vary by country. In some countries, urban or rural girls may be more likely to marry young, and it's possible that our regional analysis may mask stronger country-specific differences. Finally, we turn to marriage rates by level of educational attainment and find that, generally, more education is associated with lower rates of early marriage. Indeed, over 30% of young women without any completed years of education married early compared to rates below 10% (sometimes well below 10%) for any young woman who has completed 8 or more years of school.  

Figure B. Marriage Rates for Young Women Ages 14-17, with 95% Confidence Intervals

This analysis of marriage rates suggests that the percentage of girls who marry young varies across different demographic groupings, particularly dramatically by age and educational attainment groupings. More generally, the analysis shows that early marriage remains an issue across the set of countries included in our analysis. Consequently, early marriage continues to warrant research and policy attention in an attempt to reduce the number of young women who have fewer educational opportunities and greater health and safety issues as a result of early marriage.

 

 

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