After witnessing a decline in child marriage in India from 2006 to 2016, there is evidence of stagnation since then, as one in five girls and nearly one in six boys in India are still married below the legal age, with some States reporting a significant increase in such incidents. These grim findings are published in The Lancet Global Health, indicating a worrisome indicator that reflects the inadequacy of current policy designs .

In fact, during the later years, the study notes that six States/Union Territories (including Manipur, Punjab, Tripura, and West Bengal) saw an increase in girl child marriage and eight (including Chhattisgarh, Goa, Manipur, and Punjab) saw an increase in boy child marriage. In recent years, the practice has become more prevalent in some States/Union Territories, as per the study led by researchers at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

India’s success in eliminating child marriage is crucial to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal target 5.3. Child marriage is a human rights violation and a recognised form of gender and sexual-based violence.

“This study is among the first to estimate how rates of girl and boy child marriage have changed over time at a state/union territory level. Boy child marriage in particular is often overlooked; to date, there has been almost no research estimating its prevalence,” said lead author SV Subramanian, Professor of population health and geography.

“Our findings offer a big step forward in understanding the burden of child marriage in India — one that will be critical to effective policymaking,” he said.

Using data from all five waves of India’s National Family Health Survey, from 1993, 1999, 2006, 2016, and 2021, they estimated the number of men and women ages 20-24 who met that definition across State/Union Territories.

The study  “Prevalence of Girl and Boy Child Marriage: A Repeated Cross-sectional Study Examining the Subnational Variation across States and Union Territories in India, 1993-2021,” found that between 1993 and 2021, child marriage declined nationally. The prevalence of girl child marriage decreased from 49 per cent in 1993 to 22 per cent in 2021, while boy child marriage decreased from 7 per cent in 2006 to 2 per cent in 2021. However, progress towards stopping the practice of child marriage has stalled in recent years: The largest reductions in child marriage prevalence occurred between 2006 and 2016, with the lowest magnitude of reduction occurring between 2016 and 2021.

By 2021, the researchers counted more than 13.4 million women and more than 1.4 million men ages 20-24 who were married as children. The results showed that one in five girls and nearly one in six boys are still married below India’s legal age of marriage.

Most states and Union Territories saw a decrease in headcount of child marriage in girls between 1993 and 2021. Uttar Pradesh had the most substantial absolute decrease, which accounted for an estimated one-third of the all-India decrease in headcount of child marriage in girls observed between 1993 and 2021. West Bengal saw the largest absolute increase with over 500?000 more girls married as children.

Although smaller in the absolute number compared with girls, Manipur, Goa, and Gujarat saw substantial increases in the magnitude of the child marriage in boys headcount between 2006 and 2021. In Gujarat, the headcount burden of child marriage in boys increased by 121·9 per cent.

The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act passed in 2006 sets the legal age of marriage for men to 21 years and women to 18 years.

“Child marriage is a human rights violation,” said first author Jewel Gausman, research associate in the Department of Global Health and Population. “It is both a cause and a consequence of social and economic vulnerability that leads to a range of poor health outcomes. The state/union territory stagnation in reaching zero child marriage that we observed is a significant concern—and is a call for India to reignite progress.”

Rockli Kim, visiting scientist at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Akhil Kumar from Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA Shamika Ravi from Indian Government, and S V Subramanian from Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Cambridge are co-authors of the study.