Erica Field Age at marriage, women’s Rachel Glennerster Shahana Nazneen education, and mother and child Svetlana Pimkina outcomes in Bangladesh Iman Sen Nina Buchmann January 2018 Impact Health Evaluation Report 68 About 3ie The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) is an international grant-making NGO promoting evidence-informed development policies and programmes. We are the global leader in funding, producing and synthesising high-quality evidence of what works, for whom, how, why and at what cost. We believe that using better and policy-relevant evidence helps to make development more effective and improve people’s lives. 3ie impact evaluations 3ie-supported impact evaluations assess the difference a development intervention has made to social and economic outcomes. 3ie is committed to funding rigorous evaluations that include a theory-based design, and use the most appropriate mix of methods to capture outcomes that are useful in complex developmental contexts. About this report 3ie accepted the final version of the report, Age at marriage, women’s education, and mother and child outcomes in Bangladesh, as partial fulfilment of requirements of grant OW1.12 awarded under Open Window 1. The content has been copy-edited and formatted for publication by 3ie. All the content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not represent the opinions of 3ie, its donors or its board of commissioners. Any errors and omissions are also the sole responsibility of the authors. All affiliations of the authors listed in the title page are those that were in effect at the time the report was accepted. Any comments or queries should be directed to the corresponding author, Rachel Glennerster, at [email protected]. Suggested citation: Field, E, Glennerster, R, Nazneen, S, Pimkina, S, Sen, I and Buchmann, N, 2018, Age at marriage, women’s education, and mother and child outcomes in Bangladesh, 3ie Impact Evaluation Report 68. New Delhi: International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) 3ie Impact Evaluation Report Series executive editors: Beryl Leach and Emmanuel Jimenez Production manager: Angel Kharya Assistant production manager: Akarsh Gupta Copy editor: Deborah Aker Proofreader: Shreya Ray Cover design: John F. McGill and Akarsh Gupta Cover photo: Adam Jones/Flickr © International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), 2018 Age at marriage, women’s education, and mother and child outcomes in Bangladesh Erica Field Duke University Rachel Glennerster Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) Shahana Nazneen Save the Children Svetlana Pimkina Evidence for Policy Design, Harvard University Iman Sen J-PAL Nina Buchmann Duke University 3ie Impact Evaluation Report 68 January 2018 Summary This report evaluates the impact of an empowerment training program and a financial incentive program to reduce child marriage in rural Bangladesh. Between January 2007 and September 2015 we ran a clustered randomized trial in 460 villages in collaboration with Save the Children USA to examine alternative strategies to reduce child marriage and increase girls’ education. Villages were randomly allocated into four arms to receive a basic empowerment program; a financial incentive to delay marriage; empowerment plus incentive; and the status quo using a stratified randomized design in the ratio 2:1:1:2. In communities randomized to receive the empowerment program, all girls aged 10–19 were eligible to take part in any of four cycles that ran between December 2007 and August 2010. In financial incentive communities, girls aged 15–17 at program launch were eligible to receive the financial incentive every four months from April 2008 to August 2010 until the age of 18 if they remained unmarried. In all study villages, we attempted to resurvey all households with girls aged 15–17 at program launch 1.5 years after program completion (January 2011 to March 2012) and 4.5 years after program completion (May to September 2015). The main outcomes of interest are child marriage, defined as whether a girl married before age 18, age 17, and age 16, marriage age, whether married and whether in school at midline and endline. Overall, the financial incentive reduced the likelihood of being married under age 18 by 22% (8.7ppts, p<0.01). For girls aged 15 at program start, the likelihood of being married under age 16 fell by 23% (4.9ppts, p<0.05) in the incentive only group and 29% (6.2ppts, p<0.01) in the incentive plus empowerment group. The incentive to delay marriage also has a large positive impact on school enrollment, and we observe a significant dose response to the program: Girls in the incentive only group who were 15 at program launch were 25% (8.5ppts, p<0.01) more likely to be in school at midline and 25% (6.8ppts, p<0.01) more likely at endline. In the empowerment plus incentive arm, the coefficients are +9.4ppts (p<0.01), or 28%, at midline, and +8.1ppts (p<0.1), or 30%, at endline. While the empowerment program had no significant effects on marriage outcomes, there is some evidence to suggest that it improves schooling outcomes; girls in the empowerment-only arm who were aged 15 at program launch were 12% more likely to be in school (3.3ppts, p<0.05) at endline. In addition, we evaluate the impact of the financial incentive on various reproductive health outcomes. We find that the financial incentive reduces the likelihood of having given birth at endline by 6% (3.9ppts, p<0.05) and increases the age at first birth amongst married girls by 2.6 months (0.23 years, p<0.05). The empowerment plus financial incentive decreases the likelihood of having given birth by 5% (3.3ppts, p<0.05) and the likelihood of having given birth before age 18 by 24% (2.7ppts, p<0.01). There is evidence of stronger reproductive outcomes for younger girls (aged 15 at program start) if they received both empowerment and incentive. We do not observe a separate or additional effect of the empowerment program alone. We compare the financial incentive with five other interventions that had child marriage or marriage age as an outcome, and find the oil incentive to have a net present value (NPV) per US$1,000 invested that is higher than the NPV of any other program studied. Our outcomes suggest that a relatively small financial incentive is effective in delaying marriage and reducing child marriage in an environment in which minimum age i requirements and dowry prohibitions have proven ineffective in combating child marriage. Given the strong correlations between child marriage and long-term outcomes for girls and their children – such as poor education and health risks – we think this is an important finding. Much of the recent policy focus has been on empowerment programs for adolescents, which we find to be ineffective on marriage outcomes. By contrast, we show that noncash transfers conditional on marriage are not only more effective, but also more cost-efficient than other approaches to delaying child marriages. Our results may thus significantly change the current policy debate on child marriage. The schooling attainment results provide novel evidence of the causal effect of child marriage on schooling attainment, which has not been shown experimentally in previous research. Our results suggest that reducing child marriage would have a substantial impact on girls' schooling attainment. There is also some evidence that empowerment alone can improve schooling attainment. ii Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank all those at Save the Children and Bangladesh Development Society who were an integral part of designing this evaluation and who brilliantly navigated the complexities inherent in implementing a program that was randomized into multiple arms. This was true collaboration. We are particularly thankful to Jahirul Alam Azad (Jewel), Winnifride Mwebesa, Veronica Torres, Mary Beth Powers, Elizabeth Pearce and Barbara Burroughs, who were at the heart of this collaboration. We are also grateful for the advice and support of Shoraez Shahjahan from Innovations for Poverty Action and Diva Dhar from J-PAL South Asia. Invaluable research assistance was provided by Libby Abbott, Michael Duthie, Rahin Khandker, Elizabeth Linos, Parendi Mehta, Rudmila Rahman, Akshay Dixit, Rizwana Shahnaz, Pauline Shoemaker, Saffana Humaira, Mihir Bhaskar, and Stephanie Zhong. All errors are our own. iii Contents Summary ......................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii List of figures and tables .............................................................................................. v Abbreviations and acronyms ..................................................................................... vii 1. Background and objectives of study ....................................................................... 1 2. Literature review ....................................................................................................... 2 3. Role of the funding source ....................................................................................... 5 4. Kishoree Kontha girls empowerment program....................................................... 5 4.1 Kishoree Kontha program ..................................................................................... 6 4.2 Conditional financial incentive program ................................................................