Increases in child marriage among the poorest in Mali: ‘Reverse policies’ or data quality issues?

Figures & data

Table 1 Details of the legal minimum age at marriage based on the 2011 Family Code and 1962 Marriage Code, Mali

	General (without parental consent)	With parental consent	Other exceptions
2011 Family Code	16	N/A	15 (with approval)
1962 Marriage Code	18	15	0 (any age with approval)

Notes: With approval means on approval by a court and/or other governmental authority.

Source: PROSPERED database: Minimum age for marriage (Nandi et al. 2018).

Figure 1 Proportion of women who entered their first union before age 18, by their age at (and hence exposure to) the 2011 Family Code implementation: all women, Mali

Notes: Proportions are estimated using DHS weights and account for the complex survey design. Dotted lines represent 95 per cent confidence intervals around the estimates.

Source: MDHS 2018.

Table 2 Percentage of women who entered their first union before age 18, by their age at (and hence exposure to) the 2011 Family Code implementation: all women and by educational level, Mali

Age at law	All women			Some education			No education
	Estimate	95 per cent confidence interval		Estimate	95 per cent confidence interval		Estimate	95 per cent confidence interval
30	52.5	44.9	60.2	42.6	25.2	60.0	54.4	46.1	62.6
29	49.0	42.1	56.0	28.6	13.5	43.7	52.5	44.8	60.3
28	56.7	49.9	63.5	30.3	17.4	43.3	61.7	54.7	68.7
27	53.9	47.7	60.1	34.5	23.2	45.9	59.9	52.9	66.9
26	48.6	42.1	55.2	30.7	19.0	42.5	55.1	47.7	62.4
25	59.5	53.1	65.9	45.1	33.8	56.5	65.0	57.1	72.8
24	49.7	42.9	56.4	32.6	21.9	43.3	57.1	49.1	65.2
23	61.1	55.8	66.5	41.3	31.6	51.1	69.9	63.6	76.2
22	49.7	43.2	56.2	36.2	25.5	46.8	55.7	47.7	63.6
21	54.6	49.1	60.1	38.1	28.1	48.2	62.0	55.8	68.2
20	55.2	49.4	61.1	39.6	30.4	48.7	64.0	56.7	71.2
19	53.6	48.3	58.9	41.4	32.6	50.3	60.2	53.6	66.7
18	51.7	46.1	57.2	39.1	31.2	47.1	59.3	52.6	66.1
17	47.8	41.7	54.0	35.9	26.7	45.1	59.9	51.2	68.6
16	54.2	48.2	60.3	43.4	35.0	51.8	64.2	56.0	72.4
15	51.6	45.0	58.2	33.6	24.7	42.5	68.2	61.1	75.3
14	58.1	52.5	63.7	44.3	36.4	52.2	70.9	63.9	77.9
13	59.4	54.2	64.5	43.9	35.9	51.8	72.7	66.9	78.6
12	53.8	45.3	62.3	38.2	29.7	46.6	78.8	69.6	88.0

Notes: Values in bold pertain to women who were subject (exposed) to the new Family Code allowing marriage before age 18. Proportions are estimated using DHS weights and account for the complex survey design.

Source: Authors’ analysis of MDHS 2018.

Figure 2 Proportion of women who entered their first union before age 18, by their age at (and hence exposure to) the 2011 Family Code implementation: women by educational level, Mali

Notes: Proportions are estimated using DHS weights and account for the complex survey design. Dotted lines represent 95 per cent confidence intervals around the estimates.

Source: As for Figure 1.

Table 3 Linear probability models predicting the probability of first union before age 18, by exposure to the new 2011 Family Code and by educational level: women in Mali

	No education		Some education
	M1	M2	M1	M2
Interaction term
Not exposed to the law × Age at law	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Exposed to the law × Age at law	0.02**	0.03***	0.01	0.00
Exposure to the law
Not exposed (ref. category)	–	–	–	–
Exposed	−0.02	−0.03	−0.01	0.01
Place of residence
Rural (ref. category)	–	–	–	–
Urban	–	−0.03	–	−0.17***
Constant	0.59***	0.52***	0.38***	0.38***
Control for region	no	yes	no	yes

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

Notes: M1 represents models without controls; M2 are models with additional controls. Standard errors are clustered at the enumeration-area level. For a more straightforward interpretation of the interaction term, the main effect for the Age at law variable is omitted and separate slope coefficients of Age at law for women exposed and not exposed to the new 2011 Family Code are estimated. The Age at law variable is centred at the cohort of women who were the first to be exposed to the new law, such that the positive sign of the coefficient of the interaction term denotes a higher probability of child marriage among younger women.

Source: As for Table 2.

Figure 3 Proportion of women who entered their first union before age 16, by their age at (and hence exposure to the 2011 Family Code implementation): women by educational level, Mali

Notes: Proportions are estimated using DHS weights and account for the complex survey design. Dotted lines represent 95 per cent confidence intervals around the estimates.

Source: As for Figure 1.

Figure 4 Proportion of women who entered their first union before age 18, by their age at (and hence exposure to) the 2011 Family Code implementation, for regions that were more and less affected by the conflict: women with no education, Mali

Notes: Regions more affected by conflict (>100 deaths between 2011 and 2018) were Ségou, Tombouctou, Kidal, Mopti, and Gao. Regions less affected by conflict (<100 deaths between 2011 and 2018) were Sikasso, Kayes, and Koulikoro. Data on conflict intensity are based on the number of deaths (best estimates) from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (Sundberg and Melander 2013). Proportions are estimated using DHS weights and account for the complex survey design. Dotted lines represent 95 per cent confidence intervals around the estimates.

Source: As for Figure 1.

Figure 5 Proportion of women who entered their first union before age 18, by their age at (and hence exposure to) the 2011 Family Code implementation: women by level of local development, Mali

Notes: Proportions are estimated using DHS weights and account for the complex survey design. Dotted lines represent 95 per cent confidence intervals around the estimates. High local development is defined as night-time lights > 0. GPS coordinates are not available for 17 DHS clusters, so this analysis is limited to 328 unique clusters, of which half (167) report a value of zero for lights, hence the dichotomization.

Source: As for Figure 1.

Figure 6 Proportion of women who entered their first union before age 18 for selected cohorts across four DHS rounds: Mali

Notes: Proportions are estimated using DHS weights and account for the complex survey design. Chart shows point estimates and 95 per cent confidence intervals. Due to differences in survey design and coverage across the survey rounds, we exclude three regions of Mali—Tombouctou, Gao, and Kidal—to ensure that the estimates across surveys are fully comparable

Source: MDHS 2001, 2006, 2012, and 2018.

Nandi, A., I. Vincent, and E. Atabay. 2018. PROSPERED Dataset: Minimum age for marriage. Harvard Dataverse, V5, Harvard Dataverse, V5.

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Sundberg, R., and E. Melander. 2013. Introducing the UCDP georeferenced event dataset, Journal of Peace Research 50(4): 523–532. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343313484347

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