The Age Trap

Context: The proposed policy of increasing marriage age for women, instead of addressing the causes and consequences of under-age marriages, may instead produce adverse, sub-optimal outcomes affecting the poor and marginalized the most.

Plausible arguments for increasing legal marriage age for women

• To do away with the ‘Gender Gap’: in the legal age at marriage, and the underlying social norm which expects women to be younger than men at the time of marriage.

• To ensure optimal transition to adulthood: Marriage at a younger age before attaining physical, cognitive and emotional maturity leads to a suboptimal transition to adulthood.

Challenges to Women Empowerment

• Absence of school education and higher educational opportunities are rooted in limited socio-economic space.
• Low Nutrition: Delayed marriage without improving nutrition will lead to adverse outcomes

• Adolescent girls suffer from multiple forms of undernutrition, from chronic energy deficiency, iron deficiency to micronutrient deficiency.
• Marriage, pregnancy and delivery during adolescence drain their already low nutritional reserves and may lead to child stunting and mortality to multiple diseases at a later stage.

Argument against the  measure of increasing marital age for women: 

• Not a holistic solution: Increasing the marital age alone won’t solve the structural issues holding back women’s empowerment like adequate schooling and nutritional requirements.
• “Punitive Paternalism”: using punitive measures to achieve a progressive but difficult or elusive social goal.

Way Forward: 

• “Autonomy Enhancing Paternalism”: proposed by behavioural economists Martin Binder and Leonhard Lades.

• Autonomy-enhancing policy intervention promotes self-empowerment and aims to improve well-being by improving the process of decision-making.
• Incentivising and enabling girls to continue schooling up to Class 12 and helping to enhance their nutrition can stop underage marriages.

• Evidence suggests that ensuring secondary level schooling among girls is likely to enhance their autonomy.
• Secondary schooling of women is associated with improved cognitive abilities, mental, sexual and reproductive health.
• For, E.g. A variety of incentivizing schemes, from cycles in Bihar to laptops in Tamil Nadu, already exist towards ensuring girls’ education.

• Enhancing the nutrition of adolescent girls: Existing policies can help achieve these twin goals of schooling and nutrition

• For, E.g. Janani Suraksha Yojana is a case of an incentive-based approach working well.

• Inducing Commitment and missionary zeal: For, E.g. as demonstrated done in Swachh Bharat.

Conclusion: What is needed is an enabling, incentivizing and innovative approach to implementing the existing policies effectively.