Peer-reviewed article
Early Marriage, Pregnancy and Girl Child School Dropout
Jenny Birchall ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This review synthesises evidence on how early marriage and pregnancy affect girls' school dropout rates. The authors found that while early marriage and pregnancy are clearly linked to girls leaving school, proving a direct causal relationship is difficult because these factors can be both causes and consequences of dropout. The review notes that girls drop out because they are married or pregnant, but girls who have already left school are also more likely to marry or become pregnant. Socioeconomic inequality and unequal gender norms complicate the relationship between these factors.
Key points
- Early marriage and pregnancy are often linked to school dropout, but evidence proving direct causation is limited
- Early marriage and pregnancy can be both cause and consequence of school dropout, making causal assumptions difficult
- A significant body of evidence exists on early pregnancy and dropout in Sub-Saharan Africa, and some studies examine early marriage and dropout in South Asia
- Early marriage, pregnancy, and school dropout are interlinked with socioeconomic inequalities and unequal gender norms
- Lack of robust, comparable national data prevents simple causal conclusions about how these factors influence dropout
Limitations
This is a literature review rather than a primary study, so it does not provide new empirical data. The review identifies that available studies vary in methodology and geographic scope, and comparable national data is lacking, which limits definitive conclusions about causation.
Abstract
The aim of this review was to present the recent evidence on the impact of early marriage and/or pregnancy on the rates of girl child drop out. It also synthesises evidence that focus on laws, policies and practices that force pregnant girls or new mothers out of school. Although early marriage and pregnancy are often linked to school dropout, evidence proving a direct and causal link is limited. This is because early marriage and pregnancy can be both the cause and consequence of dropping out of school. Girls certainly leave or are taken out of school because they are pregnant or married, but girls who have already dropped out of school are more likely to marry and/or become pregnant. There is a significant body of evidence looking at the links between early pregnancy (often outside of marriage) and school dropout in Sub-Saharan Africa, and there are some studies that consider the relationship between early marriage (and resulting early pregnancies) and school drop out in South Asia. While it is clear that early pregnancy and marriage play an important part in girl child school dropout, the different perimeters of available studies, combined with a lack of robust, comparable national data, and the fact that early marriage and pregnancy, as well as school dropout, are so interlinked with socioeconomic inequalities and unequal gender norms, means it is difficult to make simple causal assumptions about exactly how early marriage and pregnancy influence school dropout.