Big-push community program cuts child marriage by 80%
Mar 17th 2026
A recent evaluation reports an 80% reduction in child marriage after a coordinated community big-push that paired economic and education supports with social-norm work, offering strong evidence of impact while underlining the need for replication and long-term monitoring.
- An independent evaluation found an 80% drop in under-18 marriage rates in communities that received a multifaceted big-push intervention compared with control communities.
- The intervention combined economic support, efforts to keep girls in school and community-level activities to change social norms around early marriage.
- The result is larger than effects typically reported for single-component programs, suggesting synergy across coordinated actions.
- Findings are promising but limited to the evaluated settings and time frame, so replication, cost analysis and longer-term follow-up are needed before scaling up.