Child Marriage in a Changing Climate: Evidence from Mali

The social costs of climate change are of global interest, as vulnerable populations face new or heighted environmental stressors. Previous research has documented many social consequences of environmental change, but several important outcomes, including child marriage, remain underexplored. We address one of these gaps by examining the relationship between climate shocks and early marriage in Mali, a country where weather extremes are common and rates of child marriage are high. We draw on three decades of marriage records (1986-2016) from the Demographic Health Surveys (n=117,170 person-years), combined with high-resolution climate data. We measure overall climate impacts on early marriage and evaluate spatial differences across rural and urban areas, northern and southern Mali, and environmental conditions. Across the full sample, cooler than average temperatures reduce the probability of child marriage, while precipitation shocks show no statistically meaningful effect. However, the effects of climate conditions vary spatially. Linear models show that the marginal effect of very high rainfall increases child marriage for girls living in urban areas and northern Mali. In addition, exposure to very cold and very dry conditions predicts marriage before age 18. Overall, our findings point to meaningful but complex relationships between climate variability and child marriage, in which precipitation and temperature exposures can increase or decrease marriage risks, underscoring the need for more research on understudied populations and spaces affected by climate change.