Data and Code for: Schoolgirls Not Brides: Education as a Shield Against Child Marriage

We study the impact of a scholarship-based intervention aimed to reduce child marriage by fostering secondary education among adolescent girls in Niger. Using a large-scale randomized controlled trial, we find that, after three years of implementation, the intervention led to large and positive effects: it halved both dropout and marriage rates, and raised girls’ and their parents’ aspirations. Importantly, there is no displacement effect detrimental to the education and marriage status of non-beneficiary girls. This paper shows that financial aid for education has the potential to transform girl adolescents’ life.





The study takes place in Niger, in five of the country’s seven regions: Dosso, Maradi, Tahoua, Tillabéry, and Zinder.

Our sample consists of 285 rural primary school catchment areas, which we refer to as villages for simplicity (in most cases there is indeed one primary school per village). The villages were selected by the Ministry of Primary Education, Literacy, Promotion of National Languages and Civic Education using the 2012 census data. The selection criteria included high rates of early marriage and pregnancy, low enrollment rates in middle school, and the absence of a middle school.

In each of the 285 selected villages, all girls who were deemed eligible, had started middle school in October 2017, and were still in school at the time of the baseline survey in December 2017 were included in the study. 
The study sample totals up to 2,272 girls.



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