Peer-reviewed article
Effect of Rural-Urban Migration on Age at Marriage Among Adolescent Girls in Bangladesh
Jannatul Ferdous Antu, Kausar Parvin, Hasan Mahmud Sujan, Mahfuz Al Mamun, Ruchira Tabassum Naved ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how rural-to-urban migration affects the age at which adolescent girls in Bangladesh get married. Researchers compared nearly 2,700 girls who migrated from rural areas to urban slums in Dhaka with similar girls who remained in rural areas. Girls who migrated to cities had significantly higher ages at first marriage and were much less likely to marry as children compared to their rural peers. The findings suggest that migration provides educational and economic opportunities that help delay child marriage.
Key points
- Urban migrant girls aged 15-19 had marriage ages 1.77 years higher than rural non-migrants
- Migrant girls aged 20-24 years were 71% less likely to marry before the legal age threshold compared to rural counterparts
- Urban migrants had substantially higher income-earning status than matched rural peers despite similar age, wealth and religion
- Bangladesh has the highest child marriage rate in South Asia at 59%
- Employment opportunities, particularly in the ready-made garment industry, have driven increased rural-urban migration of adolescent girls
Limitations
The study is observational and uses propensity score matching rather than randomisation, so cannot definitively prove that migration causes delayed marriage—other unmeasured factors could explain the difference. The analysis focuses only on girls in Dhaka slums and their rural counterparts, which may not represent all migration patterns or urban-rural contexts in Bangladesh.
Abstract
Objectives: Bangladesh reports one of the highest rates of child marriage (CM) (59%) in the world and the highest rate within South Asia. Age at marriage of girls is a critical human rights and developmental issue in Bangladesh. Migration has been documented to be positively associated with age at marriage. Bangladesh experiences one of the highest rates of rural to urban migration in the world. An increase in rural-urban migration of adolescent girls has been observed over the last few decades in Bangladesh with the expansion of employment opportunities particularly in the ready-made garment industry (RMG). This analysis explores the effect of migration on age at marriage and CM among adolescent girls living in urban slums of Dhaka. Methods: The sample was selected from icddr,b's Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance System (UHDSS) and comprises of never-married adolescent girls aged 15-19, who migrated in from rural Bangladesh to slums in and around Dhaka during 2015-2019. These in-migrants were matched with their rural counterparts from icddr,b's Matlab HDSS (MHDSS), using one to one nearest neighbor matching with caliper 0.1 using propensity score matching (PSM) method. The sample derived included a total of 2,700 never-married adolescent girls from Dhaka and Matlab. The association between migration and age at first marriage was estimated using a linear regression model and the effect of migration on CM was explored using logistic regression analyses. Results: The in-migrants perfectly matched with their rural peers in terms of age, household wealth and religion. However, their income earning status was hugely different. Urban migrants had significantly higher age at marriage than the rural non-migrants for both 15-19 (Coefficient, 1.77; 95% CI, 1.07-2.46) and 20-24 years age group (Coefficient, 2.87; 95% CI, 2.18-3.55). The migrant girls aged 20-24 years were 71% (aOR, 0.29; 95% CI, 0.12-0.69) less likely to get married before CM age bar in Bangladesh compared to their rural counterparts. Conclusion: Migration has a positive effect on delaying marriage and reducing CM among adolescent girls. Findings from this study suggest that CM can be reduced by creating educational and economic opportunities for females.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Rural-to-urban migration, with associated exposure to employment opportunities (particularly in ready-made garment industry) and urban environments
- Population
- Never-married adolescent girls aged 15-19 and 20-24 years from Bangladesh; 2,700 total (1,350 urban migrants in Dhaka slums and 1,350 rural non-migrants in Matlab)
Key finding
Urban migrants aged 15-19 had age at first marriage 1.77 years higher than rural non-migrants (95% CI: 1.07-2.46)