The cost of child marriage over the life cycle of girls and women
Evidence from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Tunisia
Highlights
Child marriage is a human rights violation and a development concern that hinders States from achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals. This harmful traditional practice contravenes several human rights frameworks that seek to advance the rights of women and girls, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).
Worldwide, the practice of child marriage has decreased in recent decades, including in the Arab region, but progress remains significantly slow. Multiple complex and intersecting factors lead to the practice and prevalence of child marriage, including discriminatory sociocultural norms and practices, poverty, rurality, and a lack of access to education, as well as external factors such as conflict, displacement, disease or natural disasters; discriminatory or non-existent legal and policy frameworks further compound the issue. These factors, individually and in concert, contribute to an environment where child marriage is either tolerated or encouraged.
Over the last decade, research has documented some of the drivers that contribute to child marriage and its consequences. These studies confirm that child marriage affects all aspects of a woman’s life. By better understanding how women and girls are affected at critical stages of life, the immense costs of child marriage become more recognizable at the individual level, in all aspects of life for these women and girls, their families, their communities, and society at large.
This study carried out a costing exercise among select countries in the Arab region using the life-cycle skill formation model, which shows the skill formation process from conception to old age and how human capabilities are developed across the lifetime. The study focuses on four Arab countries – Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Tunisia – using a variety of household and labour market panel surveys.
This costing exercise is novel in several ways. First, it is the first comprehensive costing of child marriage in several Arab countries. Second, it presents quantitative evidence on the costs of child marriage in terms of human development at different stages of women’s lives. And, finally, it places the costs of child marriage on human development at the forefront and provides a roadmap for an economic costing of child marriage.
Read more about Child Marriage in the Arab Region:
Interactive Site
