The Effect of Weather Variability on Child Marriage in Bangladesh
Abstract
Bangladesh has one of the world's highest child marriage rates. It is also one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. This paper studies the effect of climate variability on child marriage using data from five waves of the Demographic and Health Surveys. I find that a higher number of dry months in a given year significantly increases the probability of early marriage. Importantly, precipitation fluctuations only affect rural but not urban populations, suggesting that the main channel through which climate affects early marriage is likely an income channel. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Open Research
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. These data were derived from the following resources available in the public domain: https://dhsprogram.com/data/.