Three Empirical Essays on Child Marriage, Changing Social Norms, and Women’s Life Outcomes

Child marriage remains a major social and development challenge despite ongoing efforts by national governments and international development partners to eliminate the practice. In Ethiopia, the Revised Family Code (RFC) of 2000 raised the minimum legal age of marriage from 15 to 18 years, providing an important policy intervention to combat early marriage. This study evaluates the long-run impact of the Revised Family Code on women’s socioeconomic outcomes and examines the effects of child marriage and age at first marriage on women’s life outcomes.

The study utilizes data from the Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and employs a Generalized Difference-in-Differences (DID) approach with multiple groups and time periods, complemented by Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) estimation to address potential endogeneity. The findings reveal that the adoption of the Revised Family Code significantly improved women’s socioeconomic outcomes, increasing the wealth index by 2%, participation in paid employment by 2%, and asset ownership by 0.2%, ceteris paribus. Moreover, each additional year in age at first marriage significantly increased the probability of higher wealth status (0.07), paid employment (0.07), and asset ownership (0.007). Conversely, the prevalence of child marriage was found to have a significant negative effect on women’s long-term socioeconomic well-being.

The study concludes that delaying marriage through effective implementation of the Revised Family Code can substantially improve women's economic empowerment and long-term welfare. It therefore recommends strengthening the enforcement of the Revised Family Code alongside broader interventions aimed at eliminating child marriage and promoting women's socioeconomic development.