CGD Podcast: Tackling Child Marriage with Imran Matin and Kehinde Ajayi

Globally, approximately one in five women aged 20–24 was married or in a union before the age of 18. Child marriage is an economic issue as well as a human rights issue: it leads to girls dropping out of school and is associated with worse health outcomes and limited job opportunities.

New CGD research published this week in a report from the Institute for Global Politics Women’s Initiative at Columbia University estimates that the economic costs of inaction could reach $175 billion a year across countries where child marriage is most prevalent.

In this episode, I speak with Imran Matin of BRAC University’s Institute for Governance and Development and my CGD colleague Kehinde Ajayi about why child marriage persists and what evidence tells us about how to reduce it. We discuss how the drivers vary across contexts, and what policies have been shown to work, including education investments, empowerment programs for adolescent girls, and cash transfers designed to delay marriage.