Intergenerational Education Effects of Early Marriage in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper investigates the evolution of early marriage intergenerational educational inequality since Dakar by examining the effect of early marriage on children's schooling outcomes for 25-32 countries (Demographic and... [ view full abstract ]

This paper investigates the evolution of early marriage intergenerational educational inequality since Dakar by examining the effect of early marriage on children's schooling outcomes for 25-32 countries (Demographic and Health Surveys) from 2000 to 2010 in Sub-Saharan Africa. We also explore alternative mother's education, health and empower channels of transmission from early marriage to children schooling. We use an array of children educational indicators on access and retention. In our econometric analysis we employ OLS, matching, instrumental variables to account for endogeneity, and pseudo-panel for a better understanding of changes over time. First, we find that early marriage is still a significant source of inequality, though its impact have decreased across time: girls born to early married mothers are between 11%-6% more likely to never been to school and 1.7%-1.6% to enter late, and 5.1%-3.3% less likely to complete primary school, whereas boys are between 8.8%-5.2% more likely to never been to school and 1%-1.9% to enter late, and 5.5%-2.3% less likely to complete primary school. Second, child marriage increases gender inequality within households girls loss an additional 0.07 years of schooling as compared to boys if born to early married mothers. Third, our results confirms the education and health pathways, but empower to a lesser extent. We find that children born to illiterate young mothers and with short birth spacing have an additional 1.6% and 3.3% fewer chances to complete primary school. Overall, our findings highlight the need to target these children in devising post-2015 education targets.