That a report published by World Bank of late shows that child marriage will cost the global economy immensely in the coming decade is really disturbing. Even though it is quite well-known that child marriage has negative impacts not only in individual’s mental and physical health but also in overall social and national landscape, the new report, titled “Economic Impacts of Child Marriage: Global Synthesis Report” has added to the these known costs by highlighting the staggering economic cost of child-marriages. Analysing the data of 15 developing countries with high marriage rates, the report has found these countries trillions will lose trillions of dollars in the next decade if the prevailing rate of child marriage cannot be reduced. On the contrary, the report has estimated that ending child marriage would save USD 566 billion annually by 2030 due to reduced population growth. Besides, this would also translate into great improvement in women’s expected earnings as girls would then get married after passing school.
For Bangladesh in particular, which has one of the world’s highest rates of early marriage with 66 percent of its girls being married before the age of 18 and approximately one-third of women aged between 20 and 24 married by the age of 15, there are much to do in this regard. There is no denying that situations are taking better turn day by day thanks to increasing awareness among the people. However, the pace at which the changes are occurring is rather slow so all-out efforts should be made from every quarter, particularly the government, to reach out to the greater populace and make them aware of the harmful consequences of child marriage and the benefits of stopping it.
Bangladesh’s economic advancement faces many challenges, including social and political ones, overcoming which is very much necessary for the country to be able to attain its anticipated target. And when it comes to dealing with a social evil like child marriage, eradication of which primarily depends on mass awareness, we have to prove that we really have iron will to prevent it for the greater interest of the nation.
