Intergenerational education effect of child marriage in marginal settlements of Nepal

Abstract

This paper examines the intergenerational effect of child marriage on education. While most of the literature focuses on child marriage generations, the spillover effects on offspring require close attention to terminate the endless loop of child marriage-related issues. By employing coarsened exact matching (CEM), the authors analyse how child marriage impacts the education of the offspring of child-married mothers in marginal areas in Nepal. This study utilises the Nepal Marginal Settlements Survey: Household 2014/15 data set, with a finalised sample size of 2681 children. The authors use ‘overage’ as an outcome variable to reflect the comprehensive education attainment situation. In this paper, ‘overage’ refers to the difference between students’ observed age and the standard schooling age of his or her current grade defined by Nepal’s government. The estimated results show that being born to a mother married before 18 years of age increases female children’s overage by 0.352 years and male children’s overage by 0.498 years. This intergenerational effect of child marriage on education differs distinctly by gender. The effect becomes more severe as the marriage age of the mother decreases.

Keywords:

• Child marriage
• intergenerational effect
• education
• gender differences
• marginalised communities

Acknowledgements

The authors especially thank Satoru Komatsu, Yuki Yamamoto, Yutaka Ito, and Ram Prasad Dhital for granting usage of the map in this paper. The authors also owe a million thanks to the teams that produced the Nepal Marginal Settlements Survey: Household 2014/15 (Nepal MSS: H-2014/15) data set.

Disclosure statement

All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organisation or entity with any financial interest or nonfinancial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this paper. The data and materials will not be disclosed to the public, whereas the code is available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP25257102.

Notes on contributors

Yake Liu

Yake Liu graduated from the Graduate School of International Cooperation and Development at Hiroshima University. During her studies, she researched women’s empowerment and child marriage issues in Nepal. After graduation, she was employed as a Research Assistant at the School of Environment, Tsinghua University, for four years and specialised in environmental policy research. She is currently working as an environmental compliance consultant in Envix, Ltd.

Chui Ying Lee

Chui Ying Lee is Associate Professor (special appointment) at the Town & Gown Institute of Innovation for the Future (TGIF), Hiroshima University. Her research focuses on applied empirical methods in the fields of environmental economics and development economics, mainly in developing countries.

Shinji Kaneko

Shinji Kaneko is Executive Vice President for Global Initiatives and a Professor at the Graduate School of Innovation and Practice for Smart Society, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the IDEC institute, Hiroshima University. His research mainly focuses on the relationship between economic development and the natural environment, including resources and energy, from a public policy perspective, mainly in developing countries.

Niraj Prakash Joshi

Niraj Prakash Joshi is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Innovation and Practice for Smart Society, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the IDEC institute, Hiroshima University. His research focuses on pertinent rural issues in developing countries, such as livelihoods, poverty, food insecurity, farming, migration, and climate change.