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The impact and cost of child marriage prevention in rural Ethiopia

Year: 2017
Type: report
Abstract: The negative impact of child marriage, frequently prevalent in rural locations of poor countries, spans health, development, and demographic consequences. While evidence is limited, a systematic review of child marriage interventions in developing countries found that the most effective approaches in delaying child marriage were those that empower girls by offering incentives such as conditional cash transfers. However, most impact evaluations of community-based programs lack rigorous costing data, a particular weakness of cash transfer schemes where programmatic cost would affect the ability to scale up successful interventions for large populations. To address the limited information on cost and scalability of conditional cash transfer programs, the Population Council and its partners designed a study to determine if simple, cost-contained interventions could be effective at delaying marriage in African countries where child marriage is prevalent. This brief outlines the results of the research in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, and includes rigorous costing data, providing evidence for subsequent expansion of successful approaches.
Language: English
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W2966469296
Cites: 11
Cited by: 4
Related to: 10