Early Marriages in Uganda: A Comparative Assessment Of Determinants Across Regions

Abstract Background: Early marriage is any marriage associated with persons under the age of 18. Worldwide, early marriage disproportionately affects females, and is associated with high teenage pregnancies, alongside its negative effects. While early marriage is common in Uganda (49%), it is highest in Eastern (30%) and lowest in Central (19%); as such, not all girls face the same risk of early marriage even within a country. The factors that influence early marriages are important to know for policy implication purposes in Uganda. This study aims to investigate the socio-economic and enabling factors that influence early marriages across the regions of Uganda. Methods: Using a weighted sample of 13,768 ever married women from the 2016 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey. Frequency distributions were used to describe the background characteristics of the women. Pearson’s chi-square (χ 2 ) test was used to investigate the associations between early marriage and socio-economic and enabling factors and multivariable logistic regression analyses were used to examine the net-effect of socio-economic and enabling factors on early marriage. Results: Early marriage was highest among women in Eastern region (30%), followed by Northern (27%) and Western (25%) while Central had the lowest proportion at 19%. Across the regions, the key determinants of early marriage were education level, age at first birth and age at first sex (p<0.05). However, residence, wealth status and religion were only predictors of early marriage in Western region (p<0.05). Conclusions: The study underscores the need to strengthen strategies that promote girl child education, delayed initiation of sexual intercourse and child birth as measures for addressing early marriage across regions. In light of the variations in factors across regions, there is also a need to employ interventions that target women in particular regions. Keywords: Early marriage, Region, Uganda