Using georeferenced Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from nineteen countries that have been affected by violent conflict, this paper analyzes the association between conflict and child marriage. For the purposes of this paper, violent conflict is defined as lethal armed force by an organized group. We measure the intensity of conflict primarily using four categories of conflict intensity, namely tertiles of conflict (low, medium, and high conflict) versus no conflict. These tertiles are based on fatalities recorded by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). Fatalities are measured for a particular year and in a particular location at the second level administrative geography. We also present alternative results accounting for (1) four years of lagged conflict using tertiles, (2) country-specific tertiles of conflict, and (3) how many of the preceding five years had conflict. We use discrete-time hazard models and variation in conflict over time and space to examine the relationship between conflict and the hazard of child marriage.

We find that conflict is associated with an increase in child marriage in some countries, in others it is associated with a decrease in child marriage, and in some countries there is not a statistically significant relationship. This overall pattern persists across a variety of approaches to measuring conflict. Thus, while conflict is a potential risk factor for child marriage, conflict’s impacts can be heterogenous and may interact with local economic, social, and demographic environments.

Our paper deepens knowledge about the relationship between conflict and child marriage rates by expanding the number of countries and time periods studied. By undertaking crosscountry research with comparable data and methods, we can assess whether the mixed results of past research are due to varying methods and data across single-country studies, or whether there really is country heterogeneity in the relationship between conflict and child marriage.

In the first section of the paper, we review the existing literature on the relationship between child marriage and conflict. The following section describes our data and methods, before presenting and discussing the results from our models of conflict and child marriage. In the final section, we discuss the policy and programming implications of our findings, their limitations, and possible areas for future research.

# **2 Literature review**

Child marriage signals an abrupt and harmful end to childhood for individuals who experience this form of GBV. It is associated with a variety of negative social, economic, and health outcomes (Lee-Rife, Malhotra, Warner, & Glinski, 2012) with intergenerational impacts on the health of children born to women married as children (Nour, 2009). On an individual level, child marriage robs girls and boys of the opportunity to fully realize their human rights and forces rapid social and psychological development (Bartels et al., 2018; Mathur, Greene, & Malhotra, 2003; Mensch, Singh, & Casterline, 2005; Paul, 2019; Wodon, Nguyen, & Tsimpo, 2016).

Child marriage has substantial physical and mental health consequences for girls married early, including heightened risks for maternal and infant morbidity/mortality, anxiety and depression, sexually transmitted diseases, and intimate partner violence among others (Clark, 2004; Efevbera, Bhabha, Farmer, & Fink, 2017; Mathur, Greene, & Malhotra, 2003; Mensch, Singh, & Casterline, 2005; Nour, 2009; Raj, 2010; Raj & Boehmer, 2013). The economic costs of child marriage are high given the impacts on health, fertility rates, labor force participation, intimate partner violence, and educational attainment. For example, cost analysis for fifteen 3