A Statistical Analysis of Child Marriage in India: Based on Census 2011

This report was released on June 1, 2017, by the government of India’s National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, New Delhi, and Young Lives India, a Delhi-based initiative part of an international project studying childhood poverty by a team at the University of Oxford, UK. The report presents an analysis of the prevalence, genesis and geographical spread of child marriages in India.The publication examines the incidence of child marriage at the national, state and district levels based on 2011 Census data. The ‘incidence of child marriage’ is defined as the number of persons among the total population of a particular age group who were ‘ever-married’ – currently married, widowed, divorced or separated – before the legal age of 18 for girls and 21 for boys.The report identifies 70 districts in the country that account for 21 per cent of its child marriages, spread across 13 states: Arunachal Pradesh; Andhra Pradesh (including Telangana which attained statehood in 2014); Assam; Bihar; Gujarat; Haryana; Jharkhand; Karnataka; Madhya Pradesh; Maharashtra; Rajasthan; Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.The 141-page report has been divided into seven chapters: Introduction (Chapter 1); Laws and policies pertaining to child marriage (Chapter 2); Census data on child marriage (Chapter 3); Causes of Child Marriage (Chapter 4); Consequences of Child Marriage (Chapter 5); Preventive Actions and Cost-Effective Strategies (Chapter 6); Recommendations: Way Forward (Chapter 7).