Child Marriage and Women’s Educational Attainment: Evidence from a Policy Experiment in Ethiopia

Abstract

In 2000, the Ethiopian government revised the 1960 Family Code-FC. According to the 1960 FC, the legal minimum age for marriage was 15. However, the Revised FC increased to 18 years. Article 7 sub-article 1 of Revised FC stated that neither a man nor a woman who has not attained the full age of eighteen years shall conclude a marriage. As Ethiopia is a federal country established with 10 regions and 2 city administrations, there were geographic and time variations in adopting the Revised FC. Having these variations, this study seeks to analyze the impact of the Revised FC on age at marriage and women’s educational attainment, as well as the impact of early marriage on women’s educational attainment in Ethiopia. The key data source for this study is the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). According to the Generalized Difference-in-Differences with multiple groups and time periods estimation results, adoption of the Revised Family Code (RFC) increases the age at marriage by 0.16 years and years of attained education by 0.12 years for treated observations relative to controlled observation assuming ceteris paribus. The instrumental variable (IV) estimate reveals that as age at marriage increases by 1 year, years of educational attainment increase by 0.65 years. Building on the results, it is highly recommendable for the Ethiopian government to enforce effective implementation of the policy all over the country, assign human and financial resources, and design an effective monitoring and evaluation mechanism.