Peer-reviewed article
Impact of tropical cyclones on child marriage rates in 14 affected countries.
Anna Y Palmer, Yuta J Masuda, Aurélie P Harou, Margaret E Greene, Jai K Das et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined whether tropical cyclones drive child marriage rates in 14 cyclone-affected countries using national survey data from 1983 to 2015. Researchers combined marriage data with wind speed measurements to see if child marriage increased after cyclones. The study found little measurable change in national child marriage rates following cyclones, though a small increase was observed in Mozambique and among urban populations in Cambodia and Timor-Leste.
Key points
- Data covered 12.9 million person-years of nationally representative survey data across 14 cyclone-exposed countries
- Distributed lag models examined changes in child marriage rates up to three years after cyclones
- Little measurable change in national child marriage rates after cyclones overall
- Small increase in child marriage rates observed in Mozambique
- Subgroup analysis suggests slight increase among urban populations in Cambodia and Timor-Leste
Limitations
The study captures national-level trends and may miss localized impacts on child marriage in specific communities or districts. The observed increases in some countries were small and may not represent the full range of mechanisms through which cyclones could affect child marriage in vulnerable populations.
Abstract
Tropical cyclones (TCs) have had reported impacts on child marriage within certain communities, driven by disrupted livelihoods, displacement, and interruptions to education. However, the extent to which TCs affect national rates of child marriage has not been systematically studied. Here, we combine 12 888 607 person-years of nationally representative survey data on child marriage with high-resolution gridded wind speed data to estimate the effect of TCs on child marriage rates in 14 cyclone-exposed countries between 1983 and 2015. Using a distributed lag model, we estimate changes in child marriage rates up to three years following a cyclone. We find little measurable change in national child marriage rates after cyclones. We observe a small increase in the rate of child marriage in Mozambique, and subgroup analyses suggest that child marriage may have increased slightly among urban populations in Cambodia and Timor-Leste. Overall, these results indicate that, despite reported impacts, TCs are unlikely to be a dominant driver of child marriage rates globally.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Exposure to tropical cyclones (natural hazard)
- Population
- Populations in 14 cyclone-exposed countries, with specific analysis of Mozambique, Cambodia, and Timor-Leste
Key finding
Little measurable change in national child marriage rates after cyclones across the 14 countries studied