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Accepted Paper:
Early Marriage, Poverty, and Dowry: Qualitative Evidence from Climate-vulnerable Northern Bangladesh
Fatema Khan
M Niaz Asadullah
(Monash University Malaysia)
Research on the high prevalence of child marriage in climate-vulnerable developing countries often focus on coastal settlements, ignoring non-coastal disaster-prone regions. In Bangladesh, one of the world’s most affected countries in terms of extreme weather-related events, the north-western district of Kurigram is highly vulnerable to floods and has the highest prevalence of child marriage and income poverty. In this research, we therefore revisit the connection between poverty and women’s marriage timing using Kurigram as a case study. Rajshahi, another northern but economically prosperous district, is selected for comparison purposes. The analysis of in-depth interview transcripts (N=60) highlights multiple themes related to the causes of child marriage. However, compared to Rajshahi, female victims from Kurigram cite low income and social custom of dowry as correlates of high prevalence of child marriage. Quantitative data on the size of dowry demanded is positively associated with age at first marriage. Respondents from poorer families also confirm early marriage as a strategy to avoid large dowry payments. This suggests that an important explanation for the unusually high child marriage prevalence rate in Kurigram is the double-burden of extreme poverty and dowry, a process that is likely to have intensified by environmental disasters such as frequent floods and river erosion.