(Bangladesh, Egypt, Mali, and Nigeria). Notably, in the models looking at tertiles of current conflict, the relationship between conflict and child marriage is consistent within each country. That is, no country has one tertile of conflict that significantly increased child marriage while another tertile significantly decreased it.

In order to explore whether _past_ conflict might affect child marriage practices going forward, this analysis also looked at a four-year lag of conflict in each country prior to the DHS (importantly, all models had year fixed effects to account for any time trends). Lags are important because conflict may have both immediate and longer-lasting effects on economic, social, and demographic drivers of child marriage and these drivers may also have longer-term, as well as immediate impacts. Among the four countries that saw decreases in child marriage associated with current conflict, one had a persistent decrease in child marriage both contemporaneously and also in later lags (Bangladesh). In two countries – Egypt and Mali – there are complex effects, which include both increases and decreases. In Nigeria, the contemporaneous decrease in child marriage disappears, but a decrease is seen in lag 4.

Among the eight countries that showed no association between contemporaneous conflict and child marriage, half (Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Peru, and the Philippines) showed a mix of significant contemporaneous and lagged effects (both increases and decreases). In Pakistan the only significant results were decreases. In Indonesia, Kenya, and Myanmar, there remained no significant effect. Among those countries that had a significant increase in child marriage with contemporaneous conflict, one showed a significant association between both lagged conflict and increased child marriage (Chad). In other cases, the association between current conflict and child marriage shifted to the lag, as with India and Ethiopia. And in DRC, Guinea, Colombia, and Cameroon, a more complex pattern emerged with significant increases contemporaneously and both increases and decreases emerging during the four lagged years.

In additional models, we used years of recent conflict as an alternative duration measure to intensity of conflict and found recent conflict, particularly three or more years of conflict out of the past five, had a significant relationship with early marriage in seven countries. Recent conflict was associated with significantly increased early marriage in Chad, Ethiopia, India, and Myanmar, but decreased early marriage in Bangladesh, Guinea, and Nigeria. We further tested the sensitivity of our results to using country-specific tertiles of conflict or non-normalized (fatalities not divided by population) tertiles of conflict; the results were substantively similar (a mix of increases and decreases across countries) to the main model, although specifics by country changed somewhat. Across the models, the patterns underscore that while conflict can have strong associations with marriage patterns, the relationships are complex, and mediated by local context and conflict-specificities.

# **_6.2 Contributions to the literature_**

These findings provide support for findings from previous syntheses that have identified the relationship between conflict and child marriage as mixed (Neal, Stone, & Ingham, 2016). Although fragile states have high rates of child marriage and conflict can be an additional driver of child marriage (Kohno et al., 2020), conflict can not only increase but also decrease child marriage through varying economic, social, and demographic mechanisms. The mixed results and mechanisms are reflected in the findings of single-country studies (Blanc, 2004; de Walque, 2006; Heuveline & Poch, 2007; Randall, 2005; Saxena, Kulczycki, & Jurdi, 2004; Shemyakina, 2013; Sieverding, Krafft, Berri, & Keo, 2020; Valente, 2011). The current study suggests that previous mixed findings related to conflict and child marriage may not only be a result of 17