Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper examines the impact of a large-scale workfare program, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), on child marriage in India. We use two rounds of data from the District Level Household & Facility Surveys and estimate a difference-in-differences model by comparing changes in child marriage rates between a cohort of young women and a cohort of older women before and after program implementation. We find that NREGS is associated with an increase in the probability of marriage before 18 of 2.7 percentage points, or 10.6%. Our results are similar when using different definitions of child marriage and are also robust to using a hazard model and a model with program intensity at the district level.
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