One in five girls, one in six boys still married as children in India: Lancet

Child marriage continues to be prevalent in India, with one in five girls and nearly one in six boys still being married as children, according to study published in Lancet Global Health.

The study, led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, showed that child marriage has declined in India, but in recent years, the practice has become more prevalent in some states/Union Territories.

Child marriage is a human rights violation and a recognised form of gender and sexual-based violence. India’s success in reaching zero child marriage is critical to achieving UN’s sustainable development goal (SDG) target 5.3.

“This study is among the first to estimate how rates of girl and boy child marriage have changed over time at a state/Union Territory level. Boy child marriage in particular is often overlooked; to date, there’s been almost no research estimating its prevalence,” said lead author SV Subramanian, professor of population health and geography.

“Our findings offer a big step forward in understanding the burden of child marriage in India — one that will be critical to effective policymaking," Subramanian said.

Though India legally defines child marriage as marriage before age 18 for girls and before age 21 for boys, for the purposes of the study, the researchers defined it as marriage before age 18 for both sexes.

For the study, the researchers used data from all five waves of India’s National Family Health Survey, from 1993, 1999, 2006, 2016, and 2021

The study found that between 1993 and 2021, child marriage declined nationally. The prevalence of girl child marriage decreased from 49 per cent in 1993 to 22 per cent in 2021, while boy child marriage decreased from 7 per cent in 2006 to 2 per cent in 2021.

(Using the Indian legal definition of boy child marriage, the prevalence was much higher: 29 per cent in 2006 and 15 per cent in 2022.)

However, progress toward stopping the practice of child marriage has stalled in recent years: The largest reductions in child marriage prevalence occurred between 2006 and 2016, with the lowest magnitude of reduction occurring between 2016 and 2021.

In fact, during these later years, six states/Union Territories (including Manipur, Punjab, Tripura, and West Bengal) saw an increase in girl child marriage and eight (including Chhattisgarh, Goa, Manipur, and Punjab) saw an increase in boy child marriage.

By 2021, the researchers counted more than 13.4 million women and more than 1.4 million men aged 20-24 who were married as children. The results showed that one in five girls and nearly one in six boys are still married below India’s legal age of marriage.