ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE: WORK, EARNINGS AND HOUSEHOLD WELFARE BRIEF Page 1 · ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE: WORK, EARNINGS AND HOUSEHOLD WELFARE BRIEF June 2017 ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE: WORK, EARNINGS AND HOUSEHOLD WELFARE BRIEF OVERVIEW Each day, more than 41,000 girls worldwide are married while still children, often before they may be physically and emotionally ready to become wives and mothers. Child marriage, defined as marriage or a union taking place before the age of 18, endangers the life trajectories of these girls in numerous ways. Child brides are at greater risk of experiencing a range of poor health outcomes, having children at younger ages, having more children over their lifetime, dropping out of school, earning less over their lifetimes and living in poverty than their peers who marry at later ages. Child brides may also be more likely to experience intimate partner violence, have restricted physical mobility, and limited decision- making ability. Most fundamentally, these girls may be disempowered in ways that deprive them of their basic rights to health, education, equality, non-discrimination, and to live free from violence and exploitation, which continue to affect them into adulthood. These dynamics affect not only the girls themselves, but their children, households, communities and societies, limiting their ability to reach their full social and economic potential. While child marriage is widely considered a human rights issue closely connected to gender inequality,1 the significance of the practice’s impacts at both the individual and societal levels suggests that ending child marriage may play an important role in alleviating poverty and in promoting economic development. Ending child marriage can improve health at the individual and population levels, increase productivity and enhance the opportunity to realize the gains in a country’s economic growth that can result from declining birth rates and a shifting population age structure, commonly referred to as the ‘demographic dividend.’ To date, however, there has been relatively little in the way of rigorous assessment of the economic impacts of child marriage or how much child marriage may “cost” countries and societies. To address this gap, the World Bank and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) collaborated on an extensive and innovative research project to assess the impacts of child marriage on a range of development outcomes, and to understand the economic costs associated with these impacts across countries. By establishing the effects that child marriage has on economic outcomes, the research project aimed to catalyze more effective and evidence-based action to prevent it. The conceptual framework that guided our work follows: 1 As enshrined in UN General Assembly Resolution 71/175 (December, 2016), “child, early and forced marriage is a harmful practice that violates, abuses or impairs human rights.” Page 1 · ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE: WORK, EARNINGS AND HOUSEHOLD WELFARE BRIEF June 2017 Domains of Impact Aggregate Measures Development Of Impacts And Costs Outcomes Fertility and population growth CHILD MARRIAGE Earnings, productivity & Health, nutrition and violence consumption per capita Multiple pathways Educational attainment and learning and intergenerational Perpetuation Of Extreme effects through which Poverty And Private impacts are observed & public Inequality Participation in the labor force expenditures and type of work Participation, decision-making and investments Non-monetary and social costs The brief summarizes results from an analysis of the impacts of child marriage on women’s work (specifically, labor force participation and type of work held), earnings and productivity and household welfare. It also estimates selected economic What Do We Mean costs of these impacts. This brief and selected other publications from the study can be found at: by Impacts and www.costsofchildmarriage.org  Associated Costs? The aim of the study is to estimate the impacts of child marriage on IMPACT OF CHILD MARRIAGE ON development outcomes and the LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION economic costs associated with some of these impacts. The term “impact” is used for simplicity, but one must be The relationship between child marriage and labor force careful about not necessarily inferring participation is complex. On the one hand, lower educational causality. Most estimates of impacts are attainment among women who marry as children may reduce obtained through regression analysis in their likelihood of entering the labor market and adversely order to control for other variables that affect the type of jobs they engage in. This may be the case may affect the outcomes of interest. in contexts where higher levels of educational attainment In some cases, simulations are used. are associated with increased likelihood of labor market What is measured are thus statistical participation, in part due to the high opportunity cost of associations, and not necessarily impacts not working. In other contexts, specifically in low-income as could be observed, for example, with settings where labor markets tend to be informal and where randomized control trials. Since child many women, faced with poverty, must work simply for marriage cannot be randomized, we the household to survive, the impacts of lower educational must rely on regression analysis in order attainment on women’s labor market participation may be less to estimate likely impacts, but there is salient. always a risk of bias in the measures of the likely impacts of child marriage. Although child marriage need not necessarily have a direct Based on measures of likely impacts, impact on women’s labor force participation, higher fertility costs associated with selected impacts associated with child marriage may influence women’s roles are then computed. Note that we provide in the labor market and the number of hours they are able to cost estimates only for some, and not all work. Frequent interruptions to employment due to childbirth impacts. These costs rely on a number and the time burden of care responsibilities can also affect of assumptions, and are thus tentative. the types of jobs that women can engage in, forcing them Overall, the costs represent an order of into lower-paying jobs and more unstable work situations. magnitude of potential costs rather than Child marriage can also curb women’s agency and limit their precise estimations. For more details on bargaining power in their households, including possibly with the methodology and how it relates to regards to the decision to enter the labor force. Overall, the key empirical findings, see Wodon (2017). ultimate outcome of these pathways of impact is likely to Page 2 · ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE: WORK, EARNINGS AND HOUSEHOLD WELFARE BRIEF June 2017 be highly context-specific and could imply either higher or is associated with a higher likelihood of working, as well as lower labor force participation among women who marry as a higher likelihood of being paid in cash. Therefore, the net children. effect of child marriage on labor force participation, including both direct and indirect effects, is not fully clear a priori. For this study, we first conducted regression analyses using Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from 15 countries To simulate the overall effect of child marriage on the to measure the impact of child marriage on women’s labor likelihood of labor force participation and of work with cash force participation and their likelihood of working for cash earnings, we take into account three different effects. First is earnings. Whether women are paid in-kind or in cash is used the direct effect child marriage may have on the likelihood of here as a proxy variable for the nature/type of women’s work. Second, we look at the effect of child marriage on labor employment. Specifically, in low income countries in particular, force participation through its effect on women’s fertility. in-kind payments are more common in certain sectors, such Finally, we consider the effect of child marriage on labor force as agriculture and domestic work, which tend to employ less participation through its impact on educational attainment. educated women. We would thus expect women with better Table 1 provides estimates of the overall effects for women jobs to be paid in cash. who married as children, as well as for women as a whole at the national level. These effects vary significantly across Table 1 first provides estimates of the direct marginal impact countries. In Niger, for example, ending child marriage of child marriage on women’s labor force participation, would result in a very small increase in women’s labor controlling for other factors that could affect their force participation. At the national level, female labor participation. In most countries, with the exception of force participation would increase by only 0.17 percent. In Bangladesh, marrying as a child appears to increase women’s Bangladesh and other countries, the impacts are greater. Here, likelihood of labor force participation as an adult. Yet as women who would have otherwise been child brides would be discussed above, child marriage also has implications for more likely - by 3.54 percent - to engage in the labor force. But a number of other factors that may influence labor force in other countries, ending child marriage could be associated participation, including women’s educational attainment and with a reduction in labor force participation for women. the number of children they have. The effects of child marriage In general, the overall effect on labor force participation for on labor force participation through these pathways, especially women – those who married early and those who did not, educational attainment, can be significant. In many countries, tends to be relatively small, whether one considers any labor compared to having no education, a secondary education force participation or work with cash earnings. TABLE 1: IMPACT OF CHILD MARRIAGE ON LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION AND WORK WITH CASH EARNINGS Direct marginal impacts of Simulated impacts of ending child marriage, including indirect child marriage effects through fertility and educational attainment Labor force Work with cash Labor force Work with participation earnings participation cash earnings Women Women marrying early All women marrying early All women Burkina Faso NS 0.0442 -0.75 -0.32 -2.27 -0.98 Bangladesh -0.0136 -0.0142 3.54 1.80 -1.43 -0.73 DRC 0.0454 NS -1.16 -0.37 0.59 0.19 Egypt NS NS 1.10 0.24 1.55 0.34 Ethiopia NS NS 0.83 0.45 0.91 0.50 Malawi 0.0250 0.0262 -1.29 -0.21 -1.36 -0.22 Mali 0.0484 0.0401 -3.50 -1.93 -4.03 -2.22 Mozambique 0.0592 NS -2.81 -1.09 0.27 0.11 Nepal 0.0391 NS -1.84 -0.57 0.89 0.27 Niger NS NS 0.23 0.17 0.12 0.09 Nigeria 0.0504 0.0201 -3.08 -1.61 0.13 0.07 Pakistan 0.0284 0.0249 -1.85 -0.80 -1.31 -0.57 Rep. Congo 0.0238 NS -1.46 -0.68 0.46 0.21 Uganda NS NS 1.23 0.20 2.96 0.49 Zambia NS 0.0357 1.04 0.24 -2.92 -0.68 Source: Savadogo and Wodon (2017a). Note: NS = Not statistically significant at the 10 percent level. Page 3 · ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE: WORK, EARNINGS AND HOUSEHOLD WELFARE BRIEF June 2017 As expected, when the analysis includes all women – those who did not marry early as well as those who did, the impact “I got married, I got a as a share of women’s total earnings is smaller, ranging from 0.49 percent (in Zambia) to 4.58 percent (in Bangladesh) of base selfish husband. I have earnings, depending on the country. Finally, when including two children and all their men as well (whose earnings are not affected), the gains in the population’s total earnings range from 0.17 percent to 1.68 responsibility is upon percent of each country’s respective wage bill. me. I work on wages day Table 2 also provides monetary values for the foregone and night. How do I make earnings. These values tend to be large. In Burkina Faso, for my children’s future? example, ending child marriage could generate $179 million (in purchasing power parity) per year in additional earnings and From where do I fulfil productivity. In Bangladesh, a much more populous country their wishes? I got lot of with higher standards of living, the valuation is much higher at close to $4.8 billion annually. Among the 15 countries listed in responsibility at a small Table 2, the largest monetary estimate of the annual economic age.” cost of child marriage through lost earnings and productivity is for Nigeria, at $7.6 billion. “[Girls] should read and The estimations reported in Table 2 are based on the World Bank’s I2D2 labor and living standards survey database which write. But what I consider does not include variables measuring child marriage (or early as a priority is marriage. childbirths). Therefore, the simulations implicitly assume that there is no direct impact of child marriage on earnings, At 16 years of age, the controlling for education and other variables included in the place of a woman is in the wage regressions. Said differently, the impacts on earnings documented in Table 2 result from the impact of child marriage home with her husband on educational attainment for girls, and to a lesser extent on and children. If she starts the impact of child marriage on fertility, household size and the number of children in the household. These lead to indirect to work she will abandon impacts of child marriage on earnings. her family” This is a limitation of the analysis, but datasets that have QUALITATIVE DATA COLLECTED BY ICRW information on both earnings and the age at first marriage AND THE WORLD BANK. (or first birth) tend to support our assumption. For example, analysis was carried for selected countries including Niger and Nepal using existing large scale nationally representative IMPACT OF CHILD MARRIAGE ON living standards measurement surveys that have information EARNINGS AND PRODUCTIVITY on child marriage (in the case of Nepal) or early childbirths (in the case of Niger). The analysis suggests that in most cases, controlling for other variables including education, the fact that While the impacts of child marriage on labor force a woman married as a child or had a child early does not have participation and work for cash are mixed, the results are a statistically significant impact on her earnings, considering not as varied when it comes to earnings and productivity. To both hourly and monthly or yearly earnings. This suggests consider this relationship, we posited that child marriage can that the estimates provided in Table 2 are probably not curtail women’s earnings and productivity through its impact substantially biased by the fact that child marriage is typically on higher fertility and – more importantly - lower educational not observed in labor and living standards surveys used for attainment. We use wage regressions to analyze these potential simulations. losses, simulating earnings with both lower fertility and higher education. In addition, the fact that the bias in the estimates in Table 2 that could result from not observing child marriage directly in Table 2 provides the main results from the estimations. In all 15 many labor force and living standards surveys is likely to be countries included in this study, the foregone earnings due to small is also suggested by the results provided in Table 1, since child marriage are positive, as expected. Considering only the the direct impact of child marriage on labor force participation women who marry early, the gains in earnings from eliminating is often small, and not necessarily negative. Most of the child marriage range from 1.44 percent to 15.60 percent of impacts observed in Table 2 come from impacts on earnings baseline yearly earnings, depending on the country. Most of through educational attainment, and not through changes in the gains are due to higher predicted levels of education among labor force participation later in life when women marry as some of the women due to delayed marriage. children. Page 4 · ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE: WORK, EARNINGS AND HOUSEHOLD WELFARE BRIEF June 2017 TABLE 2: GAINS IN EARNINGS AND PRODUCTIVITY IMPACT OF CHILD MARRIAGE ON FROM ENDING CHILD MARRIAGE (GNI) HOUSEHOLD WELFARE Women All All Gains who women In this study, household welfare is measured in terms of women (US$ married (married household consumption per capita as well as other measures and men million in early early or of well-being, including perceptions of food security, (%) 2015) (%) not) (%) perceptions of poverty and household asset ownership. Our analysis suggests that child marriage does not have a direct Bangladesh 11.85 4.58 1.23 4769.8 impact on household welfare measures, but it does appear Burkina Faso 7.45 3.66 1.13 178.5 to have important indirect effects on household well-being DRC 2.66 0.99 0.44 168.9 through the pathways of fertility and education. Specifically, a higher number of children in the household is associated with Egypt 9.20 1.50 0.38 2892.9 lower levels of consumption per capita and thereby higher Ethiopia 9.29 4.39 1.50 1581.4 levels of poverty. Further, when mothers are less educated, household welfare, whether objectively or subjectively Malawi 10.10 3.03 1.61 167.4 measured, is often lower. These effects are probably due in Mali 9.73 4.40 1.00 174.8 part to the negative impact of child marriage on earnings Mozambique 15.60 4.02 1.68 374.9 and productivity, and the fact that child marriage increases women’s fertility and thereby household size, ultimately Nepal 12.70 4.30 1.41 710.6 reducing household welfare. In addition, as detailed in another Niger 4.23 3.03 1.61 188.4 brief, child marriage can impact household welfare through Nigeria 7.97 3.31 0.98 7607.7 impeding women’s agency and bargaining power in their households. Specifically, child marriage is associated with Pakistan 13.28 3.21 0.88 6299.9 lower decision-making power for women, particularly when it Republic of 4.48 0.52 0.17 19.1 takes place at very early ages. With limited earning potential Congo and resources of their own, as well as limited control over how household resources allocated, women’s preferences to Uganda 14.48 3.28 1.03 513.9 invest in the education and health of their children may not Zambia 1.44 0.49 0.24 68.2 be realized, resulting in both immediate and intergenerational Source: Savadogo and Wodon (2017b). welfare losses. Page 5 · ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE: WORK, EARNINGS AND HOUSEHOLD WELFARE BRIEF June 2017 CONCLUSION While child marriage may not have large direct impacts on labor force participation for women later in life, it does have substantial impacts on women’s potential earnings and productivity. These impacts are largely due to the fact that by curtailing girls’ educational attainment, child marriage tends to reduce their expected earnings in adulthood. When aggregated to the national level, the monetary value of these effects is quite significant, with countries foregoing on average about one percent of their earnings base due to child marriage. These estimates, together with other economic impacts of child marriage, provide a solid economic rationale for investing in stronger programs and policies to end the practice. Page 6 · ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE: WORK, EARNINGS AND HOUSEHOLD WELFARE BRIEF June 2017 REFERENCES Savadogo. A. and Q. Wodon (2017a). Impact of Child Marriage on Women’s Labor Force Participation across Multiple Countries. Education Global Practice. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Savadogo. A. and Q. Wodon (2017b). Impact of Child Marriage on Women’s Earnings across Multiple Countries. Education Global Practice. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Wodon, Q. (2017). Estimating the Economic Impacts and Costs of Child Marriage Globally: Methodology and Estimates. Education Global Practice. Washington, DC: The World Bank. The Economic Impacts of Child Marriage project is a collaborative Recommended citation: Wodon, Q., Savadogo, A., and Kes, A. (2017). effort by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) Economic Impacts of Child Marriage: Work. Earnings, and Household and the World Bank, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Welfare. Washington, DC: The World Bank and International Center for Foundation and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and Research on Women. additional support from the Global Partnership for Education. This series of papers is jointly produced by the International Center © 2017 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / for Research on Women and the World Bank and is available at The World Bank and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), www.costsofchildmarriage.org  The findings, interpretations Washington, DC 20433. and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the author(s) and should not be attributed in any manner to the World Bank, to its affiliated organizations or to members of its Board of Executive Directors or the countries they represent. Citation and the use of material presented in this series should take into account this provisional character. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgment on the part of the World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. Page 7 · ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CHILD MARRIAGE: WORK, EARNINGS AND HOUSEHOLD WELFARE BRIEF June 2017