title: What works to prevent child marriage: a review of the evidence.
abstract: This article reviews 23 child marriage prevention programs carried out in low-income countries and employing a range of programmatic approaches and evaluation strategies. We document the types of child marriage programs that have been implemented, assess how they have been evaluated, describe the main limitations of these evaluations, summarize the evaluation results, and make recommendations to improve future prevention efforts. The evidence suggests that programs offering incentives and attempting to empower girls can be effective in preventing child marriage and can foster change relatively quickly. Methodological limitations of the reviewed studies, however, underscore that more needs to be learned about how the programs prevent child marriage and whether impact is sustained beyond program implementation.
authors.affiliation: International Center for Research on Women, 1120 20th Street NW, Suite 500 North, Washington, DC 20036, USA. susan@susanleerife.com
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lee-Rife
authors.forename: Anju
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Malhotra
authors.forename: Ann
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Warner
authors.forename: Allison McGonagle
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Glinski
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D003906:Developing Countries / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D008393:Marriage / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D057766:Policy; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012922:Social Change; D012931:Social Environment; D012944:Social Support; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D016387:Women's Health