Schoolgirls, Not Brides: Education as a Shield against Child Marriage

We study the impact of a scholarship-based intervention aimed to reduce child marriage by fostering secondary education among adolescent girls in Niger. Using a large-scale randomized controlled trial, we find that after three years of implementation, the intervention led to large and positive effects. It halved both dropout and marriage rates and increased girls' and their parents' aspirations. Importantly, there is no displacement effect detrimental to the education and marriage status of nontreatment girls. Our results show that financial aid for education has the potential to transform adolescent girls' lives. (JEL I21, I28, J13, J16, O15)