Estimating the relationship between prolonged weather variability and accelerated marriage in Bangladesh

Marrying as a child is a severe violation of human rights, with far reaching consequences for young girls’ lives. Despite having declined in the last decades, the practice of early marriage is still pervasive globally, especially in South Asia. It is increasingly evident that climate change affects the timing and patterns of life course transitions, including the transition into unions for women and girls of all ages. This study focuses on the case of Bangladesh, where both extreme weather and child marriage prevalence are among the highest worldwide. We estimate the relationship between the two phenomena by applying multilevel survival modelling to integrated data based on the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey and the climatic information conveyed by the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index. Analyzing marriages between 1990 and 2016, we find that the risk of marrying before turning 18 and at any age increases when dry and wet weather conditions depart from the near normality for a medium and prolonged timespan, both in rural and urban areas. We interpret such evidence as a response of demographic behaviors to prolonged, severe climatic alterations rather than to single extreme climate events. These findings carry important implications for studies on family formation dynamics and the protection of women’s rights under the threat of global climate change.