The role of education in child and adolescent marriage in rural lowland Nepal.
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Authors
Saville, Naomi M
Manandhar, Dharma S
Cortina-Borja, Mario
Wells, Jonathan CK
Reid, Alice M
Publication Date
2022-04-01Journal Title
J Biosoc Sci
ISSN
0021-9320
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Marphatia, A. A., Saville, N. M., Manandhar, D. S., Cortina-Borja, M., Wells, J. C., & Reid, A. M. (2022). The role of education in child and adolescent marriage in rural lowland Nepal.. J Biosoc Sci https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021932022000074
Abstract
Marriage during childhood and adolescence adversely affects maternal and child health and well-being, making it a critical global health issue. Analysis of factors associated with women marrying ≥18 years has limited utility in societies where the norm is to marry substantially earlier. This paper investigated how much education Nepali women needed to delay marriage across the range of ages from 15 to ≥18 years. Data on 6,406 women aged 23-30 years were analysed from the Low Birth Weight South Asia Trial on the early-marrying and low-educated Maithili-speaking Madhesi population in Terai, Nepal. Multivariable logistic regression models assessed the associations of women's education with marrying aged ≥15, ≥16, ≥17 and ≥18 years. Cox proportional hazards regression models quantified the hazard of marrying. Models adjusted for caste affiliation. Women married at median age of 15 years and three-quarters were uneducated. Women's primary and lower-secondary education were weakly associated with delaying marriage, whether the cut-off to define early marriage was 15, 16, 17 or 18 years, with stronger associations for secondary education. Caste associations were weak. Overall, models explained relatively little of the variance in the likelihood of marriage at different ages. The joint effects of lower-secondary and higher caste affiliation and of secondary/higher education and mid and higher caste affiliation reduced the hazard of marrying. In early-marrying and low-educated societies, changing caste-based norms are unlikely to delay women's marriage. Research on broader risk factors and norms that are more relevant for delaying marriage in these contexts is needed. Gradual increases in women's median marriage age and increased secondary education may, over time, reduce child and adolescent marriage.
Keywords
child and adolescent marriage, education, Nepal
Sponsorship
Leverhulme Trust
Funder references
Leverhulme Trust (via University College London (UCL)) (0000033022)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021932022000074
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/333869
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Licence URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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