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Child marriages plunged when girls stayed in school in Nigeria
Related: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00796-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00796-2 (https://archive.ph/otvAa https://archive.ph/otvAa)
- SmartestProgram 6mo ago[flagged]
- GEBBL 6mo agoThis is quite the sweeping statement
- bcjdjsndon 6mo agoWhat did he say?
- GaryBluto 6mo agoIf you want to view dead comments, there is a showdead option on your account page.
- the_af 6mo ago> What did he say? Something horrifying. Among other things, the commenter ignored this is about child marriages, but also had some delightful gems like arguing about what women are "designed to do best" for "their happiness". You can imagine the rest. Or just watch The Handmaid's Tale I suppose.
- slwvx 6mo agoI think that birth rates also drop when girls and women are educated. I would like to see such education AND lotsa child support programs and credits. I.e. I think a stable fertility rate AND educated girls are simultaneously possible all around the world
- Take8435 6mo agoBirth rates would also improve when boys and men are educated. Both genders need education and child support programs. Men/Boys need to understand what responsibilities they have, if they choose to have a child. They also need to understand the effects that having a child has on a woman's body. Governments around the world would benefit their society by investing in family planning, family support (esp. child care) to enable parents to work and provide for their family. An educated and healthy populace (from infant to old age) benefits everyone.
- jazz9k 6mo ago"Men/Boys need to understand what responsibilities they have, if they choose to have a child. They also need to understand the effects that having a child has on a woman's body." This will only reduce birth rates. I have two kids and it's hard. I would still have them if I knew just how hard it would be (especially during winter, when everyone is sick). There are also many men that just don't care if they have a child, what it does to a woman's body. This won't change with more education.
- Take8435 6mo agoSo, the solution is to... not provide education? The logic doesn't make sense. You say this yourself: "I would still have them if I knew just how hard it would be" If it reduces birth rates, that's not due to education alone. That's due to a lack of investment by governments to support those families. You should know this with two kids. Any help is better than no help. Women want to work. Women want to go to school. That's what this topic is about.
- giantg2 6mo ago"That's due to a lack of investment by governments to support those families." Please show the evidence for this being true. Birthrates are low even in countries that provide a lot of support.
- cm2012 6mo agoThere is also a lot of evidence that shows the availability of factory jobs in developing countries (not just Africa but also India and Pakistan) is very good for young women. A young woman who gets a job outside of her poor family is much less likely to be forced to marry young.
- mothballed 6mo ago[flagged]
- coryrc 6mo agoDon't be obtuse. You can quit a boss and never see them again.
- oklahomasports 6mo agoAs a child factory slave?
- nathan_compton 6mo agoNo one seriously wants to compare the relative merits of child factory slavery and traditional child bride type situations. Like literally no one here is saying "its better to enslave children in factories compared to having them exchange their womb for protection from a local man."
- mothballed 6mo agoBeing forced to do anything is bad. Having an evaluation of your options is good. I don't think a facial argument can be made you're better off in the factory, although it might be true. I can think of many scenarios where I'd rather be in the factory, but also many where perhaps I'd prefer to have some selection of pastoral herding families to marry into over being funneled into "the one factory" where the god-billionaire has even more power than a vindictive husband. I'm certainly not going to look at a piece of paper that says "factory move into town and women (or chidlren) took the jobs" and then just declare the women are better off. What happened before that factory was there? Did they buy off the agricultural or herding land and turn it into a waste dump? Are the power dynamics against women even worse now, where before it was a decentralized network of husbands but now one centralized hierarchal company with bosses that are even more above the law than the husband was? I don't know.
- nerdjon 6mo agoReading this, I can't help but feel like there is a weird correlation here going on. It seems less specifically about the school and more about the support system and the safe place that this program gave to the girls. It sounds like this was a program specifically built to target the reasons they were not staying in school in the first place. Which obviously is a good thing but just simply stating "stayed in school" feels like an oversimplification of what was done here. That is an important distinction since the question to me remains if the numbers would continue without the program specifically in place. Am I misunderstanding something here?
- whalesalad 6mo agoYes this is the classical correlation vs causation situation.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- kelipso 6mo agoI think so. These girls still live with their family, it’s not like they’re in some cordoned off area where marriage if forbidden. It’s just a few hours of school every weekday. Basically there is social pressure to marry early if you’re not occupied in some way or have less prospects for employment after education.
- nerdjon 6mo agoI get that its not like they were sent to a boarding school or something. But it does mention accelerated catch up programs just for them, assisting financially, and vocational training. Which is clearly more than just "stayed in school". Meaning it is something that can't just be replicated by encouraging being in school but actively needing a program like this. Which is not a bad thing obviously, but it is important that the right lesson is taken out of this.
- colechristensen 6mo ago
- IAmAkshatAgain 6mo agoThis shouldn't be a surprise, lots of evidence in other countries to support this
- josefritzishere 6mo ago[dead]
- jonahs197 6mo ago[flagged]
- mzi 6mo agoThis kind of data was shown by late Hans Rosling and his foundation Gapminder¹. He gave a Ted talk² about similar subjects as well, and I find him an excellent lecturer. ¹ https://www.gapminder.org/ https://www.gapminder.org/ ² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w
- juliusceasar 6mo ago[flagged]
- fleroviumna 6mo ago[dead]
- jmyeet 6mo ago[flagged]
- pstuart 6mo ago[flagged]
- _doctor_love 6mo agoDon't get it twisted, no politician wants an educated populace.
- nephihaha 6mo agoSchools aren't necessarily just for education, they serve the role of childcare while the parents work, and teach obedience to authority.
- _doctor_love 6mo agoYup. Similarly, work is daycare for adults. Better locked up in a corporate office than in the streets protesting.
- MSFT_Edging 6mo agoSomething that was really grotesque was some responses to statistics around teen pregnancies. Basically, some pundits were arguing that the drastic drop of teen pregnancy due to education was a bad thing. A very high portion of teenage pregnancies resulted from sexual abuse from an older adult. People are out there quite literally arguing that the sexual abuse of essentially children is good for society, to enable the population pyramid scheme.
- tolerance 6mo agoAre people just riffing off the headline, the subheading and the first sentence of this page, is the full paper open access, or has anyone read the more substantial policy brief associated with the study [0]? That's not to say that there's nothing of value being discussed here without the last two resources, but a URL swap may be helpful. The brief has a list of freely available references for further consideration. [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00720-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00720-8 [0a] (PDF): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00720-8.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00720-8.pdf
- dang 6mo agoThanks - we'll put those links in the toptext as well. Edit: actually, since the submitted link (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00796-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00796-2) is paywalled, I've put your link at the top and moved the other to the toptext.
- jonahs197 6mo ago[flagged]
- pelasaco 6mo agoAlways when I read it, I think in Germany https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2023/bvg23-036.html https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemit... "Act to Prevent Child Marriages is incompatible with the Basic Law due to the failure to address the legal consequences of the invalidation of child marriages concluded abroad"
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- lo_zamoyski 6mo agoUnsurprising. If you have nothing else to do with yourself, marriage is kind of the natural thing to look toward. (Besides, for poor families, it reduces the number of mouths you have to feed, though school doesn't make that cheaper, so it isn't the primary cause.) School occupies your time and produces a rationale for not marrying. In the West, education and then career advancement (and perhaps a pointless desire to "play the field") are reasons for postponing marriage...which has only produced demographic decline. (We ought to recognize human biology and take that as an immutable given, and then structure social practices around it instead of willfully engaging in Procrustean hacks and customs. This would counter demographic decline, because the fix is in essence simple: start having children at a younger age. Everything else should be built around this.)
- shevy-java 6mo agoWell, there is a general trend: higher education, fewer kids. It's not a 1:1 correlation as many other factors contribute (in particular the higher cost of living; that's an even more important factor if you look at the oddities in South Korea or Japan, and even now in mainland China). Obviously the latter is not "child marriage", but I point at the number of offspring in general.
- Zigurd 6mo agoJapan, China, and South Korea are all very densely populated. Not long ago this was seen as an overpopulation crisis that would cause them to be impoverished. Now the headlines are of a population crash. Neither of these trends is sustainable and you know what they say about unsustainable trends: they won't be sustained. If the population declines sufficiently, say back to the levels before Asian populations grew so quickly, wages will get bid up and houses will get affordable. I'm not educated enough on the topic to know who is right, but there are plenty of people who say the planet is currently beyond sustainable carrying capacity. Nonstop population growth and urbanization is nonsensical. Who knows what the harmonious number of humans really is, but the only imperative is not to get it wrong in the overpopulation direction and cause billions of deaths from ecological collapse. One reason I'm not against the attempt of Mars colony is that it would teach us, with a relatively small number of casualties, that humans need a complete ecology around them to thrive.
- tim-projects 6mo agoMajor issues with this study: Key Aspects of Education Costs in NigeriaPrimary & Junior Secondary: Officially free in public schools, but hidden fees (development levies, PTA) are common. Federal Technical Colleges: These are tuition-free, with the government covering costs for uniforms and books. Senior Secondary & Tertiary: Not generally free. State-owned schools, while cheaper than private, still charge fees, and federal universities charge significant "acceptance" or facility fees. Regional Differences: Free education initiatives can vary significantly by state. In other words how long the girl stays in school is directly correlated to how much money the family has.
- saltyoldman 6mo agoIt feels very 1980s for a magazine called "Nature" looking at African culture like this. Getting an ick feeling.
- tsoukase 6mo agoGlobally and across modern times two factors reduce female fertility rate: more education and less religious commitment.
- nathan_compton 6mo agoMaybe we should have the balls to admit that these two obviously good things are good and maybe, if you give free humans good things, and they decide to have fewer children, then that is good too.
- throwatdem12311 6mo ago[flagged]
- eckesicle 6mo agoI run a company that have done over 200 similar studies for various NGOs and international organisations. In the general case, with some exceptions, we have found that two types of interventions stand above all others in terms of long term positive economic impact: 1. Infrastructure projects - like building roads 2. Gender projects - projects furthering women's rights in some way These projects are long-term sticky and do not rely on continuous funding. A paved road will remain paved even after the funding is gone, and will have a positive impact on the community for many decades. Roads allow children to go to school in neighbouring villages, and people to sell their goods in a market, use a bike or other vehicle where they otherwise would not be able to. Working with local governments to improving the attitudes towards girls and women often has a major impact on the economic output of a community both because more people can contribute, but also because the types of products and services become more diverse. This type of project is also sticky, once attitudes or structural barriers disappear they don't tend to come back. Education or sanitation initiatives can be hit or miss, where, once funding dries up, all that is left is a non functioning latrine or empty school building.
- fsckboy 6mo agoi have friends who did NGO aid work in Africa and they said their work developing potable water sources was often undone. build a village a clean watersource, a small dam or a well, and the rival next village over would get jealous, and some night they'd come over and destroy it. this was a couple decades ago.
- KetoManx64 6mo agoThat combined with the fact that there is no culture of maintaining things at a community level. People from first world countries come in and build bridges/wells/etc and then they break down due to misuse or just age and there is no effort to maintain them, due to the ingrained culture that's taught from birth. The USA has spent billions of dollars in the last century on trying to help African countries, but all it's realistically really led to is just more people in need in Africa. What happens to all those people that have become dependant on the aid when the US economy crumbles and there is no more money to send overseas?
- nottorp 6mo agoPretty sure I ran into info that there is a general correlation between the average level of education for women and natality/population growth globally, and regardless of age. Don't have any links though.
- nottorp 6mo agoFor the unbelievers, I do have links now: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/health/female-education-and-childbearing-closer-look-data https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/health/female-education-and-c...
- msarrel 6mo agoMaybe the United States can learn something from this
- owlcompliance 6mo ago[flagged]
- aprilthird2021 6mo ago[flagged]
- owlcompliance 6mo ago[flagged]
- dang 6mo agoPlease edit out swipes, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Your comment would be fine without that last bit.
- cbeach 6mo ago[flagged]
- dang 6mo agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamewar comments, using HN for ideological/nationalistic/religious battle, and breaking the site guidelines in plenty of other ways as well. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- blindeye 6mo agoBanned that account for a legit comment but you conveniently ignore all the communists and anti-Trump, group-think, down-vote warriors. Maybe it's time to get paid for something other than being a moderator (level up your employment). It's why unions are not good; bad employees get to stay in their position regardless.
- colechristensen 6mo ago[flagged]
- casey2 6mo agoThis is the demographic equivalent of overuse of pesticides in the US. People have to stop advocating for shorttermism policies that have been shown to fail over and over again. There needs to be a very high elementary school flunk rate, banned from school on failure, for girls that slowly decreases over time
- Animats 6mo agoDoes education of women have to be reduced to keep the population from decreasing? That's the position of some fundamentalist Christians [1], some branches of Islam [2], and many haredi.[3] Used to be considered silly, when overpopulation was a concern, but it's being taken more seriously now. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/technology/replacement-theory.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/technology/replacement-th... [2] https://tolonews.com/node/198993 https://tolonews.com/node/198993 [3] https://forward.com/life/326299/putting-academic-study-for-orthodox-women-in-context/ https://forward.com/life/326299/putting-academic-study-for-o...
- smarm52 6mo ago> Interventions that address complex, entrenched social problems from various angles simultaneously might be considerably more effective than smaller-scale, cheaper alternatives are. Is usually true. Bravo.