Evaluating the Employment Benefits of Education and Targeted Interventions to Reduce Child Marriage

This study sets out to identify effective interventions to reduce child marriage, estimate their economic benefits achieved through enhanced productivity, and undertake a benefit-cost analysis of the interventions.

We model the effects of a set of identified child marriage and education interventions for 31 low- and middle-income countries,¹ focusing on the reduction in child marriage rates and increasing secondary school attendance and completions. These lead to higher productivity, which generates increased gross domestic product per capita. The comparison of these benefits with the costs of the interventions generates benefit-cost ratios.

Both types of interventions have significant effects on marriage rates for girls aged 15-17 years, which fall from 13.2% in 2015 to 5.2% in 2050. Both interventions lead to sharp increases in school attendance and secondary completion, which is 19.3% points higher by 2030. The productivity improvement is 22.7% by 2030. The average benefit-cost ratio for the 31 countries is 7.4 (standard deviation of 1.0) at a 3% discount rate.

The results indicate that there are substantial economic gains to reducing child marriage by specific child marriage and education interventions.