Child Marriage and Climatic Factors: Evidence from Survey Data in Kenya

Child marriage remains high in Kenya and could potentially be exacerbated by climate change, which, together with other environmental crises increasingly intersect with social vulnerabilities hence multiplying the known drivers of child marriages such poverty, displacement, conflict and being out-of-school. This study explores the link between climatic factors, specifically high temperature and child marriage in Kenya, using data from the 2014 and 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Surveys. The analysis employed two-level multilevel models, incorporating individual and cluster-specific random effects, to examine the influence of temperature on child marriage. Geospatial analyses further mapped the geographic patterns of child marriage and temperature across Kenya’s sub-counties.Results revealed a significant positive relationship between high temperatures and child marriage after controlling for other factors, with hotter regions showing higher prevalence rates. These clusters were predominant in coastal and northeastern counties, identifying high-risk areas such as Mandera East, Mandera North, and Samburu North.The findings underscore the role of high temperatures in perpetuating child marriage and highlight the urgent need for targeted interventions in vulnerable regions. This paper contributes to the poorly understood yet important intersections between climatic factors and child marriage, showing subnational disparities in association between high temperature and child marriage in Kenya, where no such studies exist.