Climate Change and Child Marriage: Evidence from Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of environmental vulnerability on the risk of child marriage in Bangladesh. Community vulnerability measures are constructed for 240 rural communities in eight districts according to the presence of three indicators of environmental vulnerability—history of cyclones, flooding, and waterlogging. Community data are linked to individual-level adolescent survey data from a representative sample of 15,000 adolescent girls in those communities. Types of environmental vulnerability and the effect on adolescent girls’ marriage outcomes have been explored using discrete time survival analysis. Results show that coastal communities with prolonged waterlogging and salinity have significantly higher child marriage rates, and there is no evidence of higher risks of child marriage in flood-affected areas. The paper concludes that slow and rapid onset events vary in their impact on child marriage. It is important to distinguish between rapid onset factors, such as floods and cyclones, and slow and less dramatically visible factors, such as waterlogging, that affect marriage through longer-term impacts on lives and livelihoods. Programs need to cast a wider net to safeguard girls living in the communities not only where immediate and sudden environmental emergencies have occurred but also in the areas where climate-induced disasters may not seem very visible but have slow, cascading effects and pose a risk for child marriage.