Environment/Climate Change
The effect of drought on the rate of child marriage in 61 countries Anna Palmer* Anna Palmer Jill Baumgartner Alissa Koski
Extreme weather events, such as droughts, have the potential to affect the rate of child marriage by creating or exacerbating economic hardship, including by lowering household income, increasing unemployment, and intensifying food insecurity. In this study, we analyze over 12 million person-years of nationally representative data across 61 countries to estimate the effect of 218 major drought events occurring between 1980 and 2018 on the rate of child marriage. We employ a recently developed difference-in-differences study design estimated via a flexible linear model which controls for national-level trends and subnational characteristics, allows for staggered exposure to drought, and allows for heterogeneous treatment effects across sub-national regions and time. We find that the rate of child marriage remained relatively unchanged during drought events in most countries. However, our study identifies several countries where the rate of child marriage increased (e.g. Uganda, Mali) and decreased (e.g. Haiti, Democratic Republic of the Congo) in response to droughts. Our findings challenge the prevailing narrative that droughts consistently contribute to increasing child marriage and suggest the effect of droughts on child marriage is highly context-dependent.
