Spatial distribution and associated factors’ of Early Marriage among Reproductive age women in Ethiopia: A Secondary Data Analysis of Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey 2016.

Abstract

Background Besides, the presence of national law, the country has to set up its own mid-term and long term goals to bring about a significant reduction in child marriages in Ethiopia. To achieve this, determining the spatial pattern of early marriage and factors associated is important for government, other concerned bodies, program implementers and policy developers to end up early childhood marriage. Thus, the aim of this study was to assess the spatial patterns and associated factors of Early marriage among reproductive-age women in Ethiopia. Methods This study analyzed retrospectively a cross-sectional data on a weighted sample of 11,646 women aged 15-49 years after requesting from Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey 2016 via the link www.measuredhs.com . ArcGIS version 10.7 software was used to visualize spatial distribution for Early marriage. The Bernoulli model was applied using Kilduff SaTScan version 9.6 software to identify significant purely spatial clusters for Early marriage in Ethiopia multiple logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors associated with early marriage. Finally, variables with a p-value<0.05 were considered as statistically significant. Results In this analysis, about 62.8% (95%CI: 61.9, 63.74%) of the study participants were married before they reached 18 years. The overall median age at first marriage was 17.1 with IQR 5 years. The high clustering of early marriage was located in Amhara, Afar, and Gambella Regions. In spatial Scan statistics 87 clusters (RR = 1.28, P-value < 0.001) significant primary clusters were identified. The associated factors of early marriage were lesser among women’s attending primary (AOR=0.60; 95%CI: 0.51, 0.71), secondary (AOR=0.19; 95%CI: 0.13, 0.26) and tertiary education (AOR=0.11; 95%CI: 0.07, 0.18). Similarly, women found in Addis Ababa were at a lesser risk of early marriage compared to other regions of the country. Conclusion Marriage below age 18 was high in Ethiopia. High-risk area of early marriage was located in Amhara, Afar, and Gambella and special attention should be given for identified risk areas. Therefore, providing educational opportunities to young girls was important in addition to inhibiting the marriage of girls under 18 years.

Early marriage and its associated factors among women in Ethiopia: Systematic reviews and meta-analysis

“…Upon completion of the review, 144 articles were excluded based on further criteria. The present systematic review and meta-analysis study included 14 papers [34,[46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58], which comprised a total of 67,040 study participants, by the pre-defined inclusion criteria (Fig 1).…”

“…Notably, all of the studies were community-based in nature. Specifically, the sample comprised 18 studies conducted in National [34,49,50,[54][55][56][57][58], three in Amhara [46,47,52], two in Oromia [48,53], and one in Amhara, Southern Nations and Nationalities People's Region, and Oromia region [51]. The sample sizes ranged from 373 to 11649, while the rate of early PLOS ONE marriage ranged from 40% to 73%.…”

Early marriage, stressful life events and risk of suicide and suicide attempt: a case–control study in Iran

“…Early marriage, also known as child marriage, is the marriage or union between two persons in which one or both parties are younger than 18 years [ 16 ]. It is estimated that more than 21% of women married under the age of 18 around the world in 2020 [ 17 ]; in other words, almost 23 girl children got married each minute [ 18 ].…”