We study a set of interventions in Ethiopia geared towards eliminating child marriage. The interventions facilitate community discussion about child marriage and provide economic incentives for girls to stay in school and remain unmarried. Changing social norms is often thought of as very difficult, and if there is a marriage penalty to being among the first to deviate to an older age of marriage, raising the typical age at first marriage could be especially challenging. Regardless, using weighting and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that both interventions reduce the probability a girl from 8 to 17 years old has been married by about 4 to 7 percentage points. We observe some positive spillover effects: the program appears to have increased the intra-household decision-making power of women. However, we also find suggestive evidence of increased polarisation in beliefs about child marriage, including some possible backlash especially among men. No robust effects were seen on education outcomes, suggesting that, in contrast to other studies, this was not the mechanism through which the intervention had an effect.

中文翻译：

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改变社会规范的挑战：来自埃塞俄比亚针对童婚的干预措施的证据

我们在埃塞俄比亚研究了一系列旨在消除童婚的干预措施。这些干预措施促进了关于童婚的社区讨论，并为女孩留在学校和保持未婚提供经济激励。改变社会规范通常被认为是非常困难的，如果成为最先偏离结婚年龄的人会受到婚姻惩罚，那么提高初婚的典型年龄可能尤其具有挑战性。无论如何，使用加权和差异差异方法，我们发现这两种干预措施都将 8 至 17 岁女孩结婚的概率降低了约 4 至 7 个百分点。我们观察到一些积极的溢出效应：该计划似乎增加了女性的家庭内部决策权。然而，我们还发现了关于童婚观念的两极分化加剧的暗示性证据，包括一些可能的强烈反对，尤其是在男性中。没有看到对教育结果的强烈影响，这表明与其他研究相比，这不是干预产生影响的机制。