alt Hacker NewsChild marriages plunged when girls stayed in school in Nigeria
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There is also a lot of evidence that shows the availability of factory jobs in developing countries (not just Africa but also India and Pakistan) is very good for young women. A young woman who gets a job outside of her poor family is much less likely to be forced to marry young.
This kind of data was shown by late Hans Rosling and his foundation Gapminder¹. He gave a Ted talk² about similar subjects as well, and I find him an excellent lecturer.
I think that birth rates also drop when girls and women are educated. I would like to see such education AND lotsa child support programs and credits. I.e. I think a stable fertility rate AND educated girls are simultaneously possible all around the world
Meanwhile in America [1][2][3][4][5][6].
Roger Freeman, then advisor to presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1970, said "We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat" [7], leading to Reagan unwinding the free college of the UC system and this was a progenitor to the current student debt crisis.
But beyond college education, there's also an attack on education at K-12 levels. Homeschooling and a lack of sex education contribute to perpetuating abuse and trapping children (primarily girls) in this cycle.
[1]: https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/06/child-marriage-calif...
[2]: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/married-young-the...
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/09/chil...
[4]: https://www.freedomunited.org/u-s-child-mariage-laws-individ...
[5]: https://www.unchainedatlast.org/united-states-child-marriage...
[6]: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interactive/child-marriag...
[7]: https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/threat-of-educate...
This shouldn't be a surprise, lots of evidence in other countries to support this
Sounds like a net positive. Go team!
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They should ban home schools in the US to achieve the same.
Reading this, I can't help but feel like there is a weird correlation here going on.
It seems less specifically about the school and more about the support system and the safe place that this program gave to the girls.
It sounds like this was a program specifically built to target the reasons they were not staying in school in the first place. Which obviously is a good thing but just simply stating "stayed in school" feels like an oversimplification of what was done here.
That is an important distinction since the question to me remains if the numbers would continue without the program specifically in place.
Am I misunderstanding something here?