• Gender and the MDGs

Gender and the MDGs

One in seven girls in the developing world marries before the age of fifteen. Nearly half of the 331 million girls in developing countries are expected to marry by their 20th birthday. At this rate, 100 million more girls—or 25,000 more girls every day—will become child brides in the next decade. This report aimed at policy-makers and development practitioners working on or planning a future program to prevent child marriage investigates two key questions:

• What factors are associated with risk of or protection against child marriage, and ultimately could be the focus of prevention efforts?
• What are the current programmatic approaches to prevent child marriage in developing countries, and are these programs effective?

The report finds that the following factors were strongly associated with child marriage:

• Girls’ education is the most important factor associated with age at marriage. Secondary education specifically emerges as the factor most strongly associated with reduced prevalence of child marriage, but primary education was the most important for younger girls, many of whom marry at an early age
• Age gap, or the age difference between husbands and wives, also is strongly associated with child marriage
• Some regions within countries have much higher rates of child marriage and require focused attention from intervention efforts
• Economic status of the households in which girls live is also an important influence on age at marriage
• Different factors are associated with the marriage of younger girls at the “tipping point” age—the age at which child marriage prevalence in a country starts to increase markedly (usually 13 or 14)

Analysis of the existing programs on child marriage shows that:

• Child marriage programs are few and more programs are needed where prevalence is highest
• Efforts to reduce child marriage span a range of sectors (such as education, health, legal, policy and economic) and approaches (such as community sensitization, awareness-raising and life-skills education). However, communication and collaboration among programs is limited, hindering the ability to share lessons learned
• Monitoring and evaluation, a valuable tool for determining best practices and identifying effective programs for scaling up, is rare among child marriage programs
• The unique health, social, educational and economic needs of married girls are underserved by existing child marriage programs

For prevention of child marriages the report suggests that:

• Promotion of education at all levels is an effective way to address child marriage
• Education and awareness-raising on the negative outcomes often associated with age gap, such as domestic violence, could help minimize this phenomenon
• Increasing girls’ ability to generate income, by helping families offset the costs of postponing marriage, and by changing local norms on bride price and dowry can address the issue of economic status
• Programs seeking to prevent marriage when it first becomes a serious problem should target and tailor efforts to young girls approaching the “tipping point” age.
  

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