Peer-reviewed article
The impact of girl child marriage on the completion of the first cycle of secondary education in Zimbabwe: A propensity score analysis
Annah Vimbai Bengesai, Lateef Babatunde Amusa, Felix Makonye ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how child marriage affects girls' completion of secondary education in Zimbabwe using data from 2,015 national health survey. Girls who married early were significantly less likely to complete the first cycle of secondary school (Ordinary Level), with married girls having less than half the likelihood of unmarried girls. The research used statistical methods to compare similar groups of ever-married women aged 20-29 years. The findings suggest child marriage is a major barrier to educational attainment and could prevent Zimbabwe from meeting sustainable development goals.
Key points
- Typical age at first marriage in Zimbabwe is 18 years, concentrated between ages 15-22
- Early marriage reduced completion chances for the first cycle of secondary school by more than half
- Propensity score matching estimate showed married girls had 38% the odds of unmarried girls completing school (PR = 0.381)
- Logistic regression produced similar results (PR = 0.446), showing consistency across analytical methods
- The study calls for social change interventions targeting adults and policies to keep teenage girls in school
Limitations
The study examines only completion of the first cycle of secondary education and cannot explain the mechanisms through which marriage affects education. The cross-sectional design, despite propensity score matching, cannot establish causation and may not account for unmeasured confounders affecting both marriage and educational outcomes.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The association between girl child marriage and education is widely acknowledged; however, there is no large body of demographic studies from Zimbabwe that have addressed this aspect. This study aimed to examine the extent to which child marriage affects one academic milestone, i.e. completion of the Ordinary Level, the first cycle of high school, which is also the most critical indicator of educational achievement in Zimbabwe. METHODS: We used the 2015 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey and extracted 2380 cases of ever-married women aged between 20-29 years. We applied a propensity score-based method, which allowed us to mimic a hypothetical experiment and estimate outcomes between treated and untreated subjects. RESULTS: Our results suggest that child age at first marriage is concentrated between the ages of 15-22, with the typical age at first marriage being 18 years. Both logistic regression and PSM models revealed that early marriage decreased the chances of completing the first cycle of high school. Regression adjustment produced an estimate of prevalence ratio (PR) of 0.446 (95% CI: 0.374-0.532), while PSM resulted in an estimate (PR = 0.381; 95% CI: 0.298-0.488). CONCLUSION: These results have implications for Zimbabwe's development policy and suggest that girl-child marriage is a significant barrier to educational attainment. If not addressed, the country will most likely fail to meet sustainable development Goal 4.2 and 5.3. Social change interventions that target adults and counter beliefs about adolescent sexuality and prepubescent marriage should be put in place. Moreover, interventions that keep teenage girls in school beyond the first cycle of high school should be prioritised.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Social change interventions targeting adults to counter beliefs about adolescent sexuality and prepubescent marriage; interventions to keep teenage girls in school beyond first cycle
- Population
- Ever-married women aged 20-29 years in Zimbabwe
Key finding
Early marriage decreased chances of completing the first cycle of high school with PR = 0.381 (95% CI: 0.298-0.488) using propensity score matching