Child marriages plunged when girls stayed in school in Nigeria

尼日利亚：女孩留校上学使童婚率大幅下降

Messages for policy 政策建议

• Multipronged programmes can have high upfront costs yet still have a net positive benefit.

• 多管齐下的项目虽然前期成本较高，但仍能产生净正向收益。

• With the right programme and implementation, the age at which girls marry can be delayed.

• 通过合适的项目和执行方案，可以推迟女孩的结婚年龄。

• Creating opportunities for girls to attend school in cases in which that runs counter to the behaviour of most people in their communities might work only if cost and social barriers can be overcome.

• 在那些女孩上学与社区主流行为相悖的情况下，只有克服成本和社交障碍，创造受教育机会才可能奏效。

• Educating girls has many benefits, not just for the girls themselves, but also for their families and communities.

• 教育女孩不仅对女孩自身，对她们的家庭和社区也具有诸多益处。

The policy problem 政策难题

Globally, around 650 million girls and women alive today were first married before 18 years of age. A 2021 report estimated that nearly 80% of girls in northern Nigeria had married before they turned 18. Early marriage — particularly when it is arranged by parents, guardians or other parties without the involvement of the girl — has negative effects on many aspects of the futures of adolescent girls. It affects their agency, health and education adversely, as well as their level of income, and increases their risk of experiencing violence. It has been estimated that ending early-marriage practices would reduce the share of girls who have a child before they are 18 by 75% and could also increase women’s earnings and productivity, providing large benefits to countries’ economies. For instance, in 2015, an estimated US$7.6 billion in extra earnings could have been generated in Nigeria. 在全球范围内，目前约有 6.5 亿女性在 18 岁之前就已结婚。2021 年的一份报告估计，尼日利亚北部近 80% 的女孩在 18 岁前就已成婚。早婚——尤其是当婚姻由父母、监护人或其他方在女孩未参与的情况下安排时——会对青春期女孩未来的方方面面产生负面影响。它会对其自主权、健康和教育产生不利影响，降低其收入水平，并增加她们遭受暴力的风险。据估计，终止早婚习俗将使 18 岁前生育的女孩比例减少 75%，同时还能提高女性的收入和生产力，为国家经济带来巨大收益。例如，据估算，2015 年尼日利亚本可因此额外产生 76 亿美元的收入。

In many contexts, girls marry at a young age because feasible alternatives are lacking; systemic constraints can mean that marriage is the best choice available to them. The existing resource constraints, attitudes and norms that enable child marriage are multifaceted and intertwined, yet many interventions that seek to address child marriage have a narrow focus. Multifaceted interventions could take strategic advantage of various programmes’ complementary components to succeed where others have failed. 在许多情况下，女孩早婚是因为缺乏可行的替代选择；系统性的制约意味着婚姻往往是她们能做出的最佳选择。导致童婚现象的资源匮乏、观念和规范是多方面且相互交织的，然而许多旨在解决童婚问题的干预措施往往关注点过于狭窄。多维度的干预措施可以战略性地利用各类项目的互补性，从而在其他项目失败的地方取得成功。

The findings 研究发现

We found that the Pathways to Choice programme reduced by 80% the likelihood that girls in northern Nigeria would be married two years after receiving an intervention that encouraged them to attend school or other training. Girls in the control group, who did not have access to the programme, had a marriage rate of 86%; those in the intervention group, a rate of 21%. Our intervention also increased the girls’ school attendance by 70 percentage points, and improved their access to social support, as well as their self-perception and ability to advocate for themselves. Moreover, it increased the likelihood that a participant’s younger siblings would be enrolled at school, with an increase of 87% for sisters and 41% for brothers. We find that the programme has net returns of $1,627 per $1,000 invested, and our estimates of its lifetime advantages for the participants show that the intervention has a benefit–cost ratio of 2.41. 我们发现，“选择之路”（Pathways to Choice）项目使尼日利亚北部女孩在接受鼓励其上学或参加培训的干预措施两年后，结婚的可能性降低了 80%。未参与该项目的对照组女孩结婚率为 86%；而干预组的结婚率仅为 21%。我们的干预措施还使女孩的入学率提高了 70 个百分点，改善了她们获得社会支持的渠道，并提升了她们的自我认知和自我主张能力。此外，该项目还增加了参与者年幼弟妹入学的可能性，其中姐妹入学率提高了 87%，兄弟提高了 41%。研究显示，该项目每投入 1,000 美元可获得 1,627 美元的净回报，且根据对参与者终身收益的估算，该干预措施的效益成本比为 2.41。

The study 研究方法

The Pathways to Choice programme is a multipronged, community-focused intervention by Nigeria’s Centre for Girls Education in Abuja. It simultaneously tackles several constraints on girls’ education over two years, through community engagement, remedial education and social and in-kind support, encouraging participants to attend school or vocational training. To test its effects, we performed a randomized controlled trial between 2018 and 2020 in 18 communities in northern Nigeria’s Kaduna, Kano and Borno states. We focused on 1,181 unmarried girls who were aged between 12 and 17 years old and not at school at the start of the study. After a baseline survey, the communities were divided into nine pairs, with one of each pair receiving our intervention. Two years later, we conducted a follow-up survey with the same participants. Our results compare the outcomes of girls in communities that received our intervention with those in communities that did not. “选择之路”项目是由位于阿布贾的尼日利亚女孩教育中心开展的一项多管齐下、以社区为中心的干预项目。该项目在两年内通过社区参与、补习教育以及社会和实物支持，同时解决制约女孩教育的多个问题，鼓励参与者上学或接受职业培训。为了测试其效果，我们在 2018 年至 2020 年间对尼日利亚北部卡杜纳州、卡诺州和博尔诺州的 18 个社区进行了随机对照试验。研究对象为 1,181 名在研究开始时年龄在 12 至 17 岁之间且未上学的未婚女孩。在基线调查后，这些社区被分为九对，每对中有一个社区接受了我们的干预。两年后，我们对同一批参与者进行了后续调查。我们的结果对比了接受干预社区与未接受干预社区中女孩的状况。