View metadata, citation and similarbroughtCORE papers to you at bycore.ac.uk provided by Victoria University Eprints Repository EVALUATING THE EMPLOYMENT BENEFITS OF EDUCATION AND TARGETED INTERVENTIONS TO REDUCE CHILD MARRIAGE Bruce Rasmussen, MEc, MPA, PhDa
[email protected] Neelam Maharaja
[email protected] Peter Sheehan, MA, DPhil a
[email protected] Howard Friedman, MMS, PhD b
[email protected] a Victoria Institute of Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne Victoria, Australia 8001 b UNFPA, 605 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10158 USA Conflict of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. Corresponding author: Bruce Rasmussen Victoria Institute of Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne Victoria, Australia 8001
[email protected] Phone: +61 9919 1342 Fax: +613 9919 1350 Acknowledgments: Author’s contributions: The conceptual framework BR and PS; text BR, NM, PS, HF. Literature review NM, modelling BR. The authors thank Dr Annababette Wils, for access to her education model and the very productive discussions about the model, Alison Welsh and Margarita Kumnick for their assistance with data analysis and editing respectively. We thank the editors and reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments. We gratefully acknowledge UNFPA funding support for this project. 1 ABSTRACT Purpose: This study sets out to identify effective interventions to reduce child marriage, to estimate their economic benefits achieved through enhanced productivity and to undertake a benefit/cost analysis of the interventions. Methods: We model the effects of a set of identified child marriage and education interventions for 31 low and middle-income countries,1 focusing on the reduction in child marriage rates and increasing secondary school attendance and completions.