GoKawiilA locally tailored, big-push intervention to educate unmarried adolescent girls in 18 communities in northern Nigeria reduced rates of marriage from 86% to just 21%. Interventions that address complex, entrenched social problems from various angles simultaneously might be considerably more effective than smaller-scale, cheaper alternatives are.
Source research: Cohen, I., Abubakar, M. & Perlman, D. A big-push community intervention reduced rates of child marriage by 80%. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10206-2 (2026).
Messages for policy
• Multipronged programmes can have high upfront costs yet still have a net positive benefit.
• With the right programme and implementation, the age at which girls marry can be delayed.
• Creating opportunities for girls to attend school in cases in which that runs counter to the behaviour of most people in their communities might work only if cost and social barriers can be overcome.
• Educating girls has many benefits, not just for the girls themselves, but also for their families and communities.
The policy problem
Globally, around 650 million girls and women alive today were first married before 18 years of age1. A 2021 report2 estimated that nearly 80% of girls in northern Nigeria had married before they turned 18. Early marriage — particularly when it is arranged by parents, guardians or other parties without the involvement of the girl — has negative effects on many aspects of the futures of adolescent girls. It affects their agency, health and education adversely, as well as their level of income, and increases their risk of experiencing violence3. It has been estimated4 that ending early-marriage practices would reduce the share of girls who have a child before they are 18 by 75% and could also increase women’s earnings and productivity, providing large benefits to countries’ economies. For instance, in 2015, an estimated US$7.6 billion in extra earnings could have been generated in Nigeria4.
In many contexts, girls marry at a young age because feasible alternatives are lacking; systemic constraints can mean that marriage is the best choice available to them5. The existing resource constraints, attitudes and norms that enable child marriage are multifaceted and intertwined, yet many interventions that seek to address child marriage have a narrow focus. Multifaceted interventions could take strategic advantage of various programmes’ complementary components to succeed where others have failed.
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