📄 Abstract
The legal frameworks and social interventions have steadily pushed back the age of marriage in India. However, early marriage remains a deeply ingrained issue, structured heavily by geography and access to schooling. This study examines the inverse relationship between female educational attainment and early marriage across 27 Indian states by drawing on data from National Family Health Survey rounds 5 (NFHS-5, 2019–21) and 6 (NFHS-6, 2023–24). At the national level, the proportion of women aged 20-24 married before age 18 declined from 23.3% to 20.1%, occurring alongside a 5.4 percentage-point increase in the proportion of women completing ten or more years of education. A state-level ecological correlation analysis identified a strong and statistically significant inverse association between female educational attainment and the prevalence of child marriage. State-level patterns nevertheless showed considerable heterogeneity. Early-marriage prevalence declined in 23 of the 27 states, while four states including Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Punjab recorded higher point estimates in NFHS-6 than in NFHS-5. However, the persistence of relatively high child-marriage prevalence in some states despite rising educational attainment indicates that educational expansion should be considered alongside wider socioeconomic and social-norm conditions. The findings indicate that higher state-level female educational attainment is strongly associated with lower child-marriage prevalence while substantial subnational variation persists. The persistence of high-prevalence states and deviations from the overall pattern suggests that educational expansion needs to be considered alongside broader socioeconomic and social-norm conditions.
🏷️ Keywords
📚 How to Cite:
Shivani Bhagat , FEMALE EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT AND CHILD MARRIAGE IN INDIA: A STATE-LEVEL ECOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF NFHS-5 AND NFHS-6 , Volume 13 , Issue 9, September 2026, EPRA International Journal of Socio-Economic and Environmental Outlook(SEEO) , Pages: 30 - 37 ,