Despite legal reforms, child marriage remains prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 31% of women aged 20–24 are married before the age of 18. This persistence suggests that legislation alone is insufficient to eliminate the practice. Economic and social pressures jointly sustain child marriage, with financial constraints playing a particularly critical role in regions where the bride's family receives a financial transfer from the groom upon marriage (a "bride price"). Marrying off daughters early can serve as an economic coping strategy, especially during times of income shock, as it accelerates the receipt of marriage payments. This paper examines whether economic hardship undermines the effectiveness of child marriage bans. Combining household survey data with rainfall shocks and ethnographic information across 12 African countries, I estimate the impact of droughts, used as a proxy for negative income shocks, on the effectiveness of these bans. Using a difference-in-differences approach that leverages variation in exposure to bans across subnational regions and birth cohorts, I find that child marriage bans reduce the probability of marriage before ages 15 and 18. However, these effects are concentrated in urban areas. In rural areas, the bans do not lower the incidence of child marriage but delay the age at first marriage and childbirth. In areas where bride price is practiced, the bans decrease early marriage in both rural and urban settings under stable economic conditions, but their impact is significantly weakened when girls experience droughts during adolescence. These findings highlight the importance of addressing economic vulnerability alongside legal reform to effectively combat child marriage.
@unpublished{lesueur2026childmarriagebans,
author = {Lesueur, Mathilde},
title = {The Impact of Weather Shocks on the Effectiveness of Child Marriage Bans},
year = {2026},
note = {Working paper}
}
This study examines the effectiveness of anti-Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) laws in reducing the prevalence of FGM across 19 countries. We compile a new database on national anti-FGM legislation detailing the specific provisions. Using all available DHS and MICS data, we compare girls at risk of FGM before and after the law within the same region and same ethnic group using a staggered difference-in-differences approach. Our main results show that anti-FGM laws significantly reduce FGM rates by an average of 5 percentage points. The effect is three times larger for girls born after the law's enactment and in countries with a stronger rule of law. The magnitude of the impact increases with the pre-ban prevalence of FGM, but we observe the largest relative reductions in areas where FGM concerned about 30% of the female population before the reform. Further results reveal welfare enhancing implications of banning FGM in terms of increased schooling. This work provides a novel contribution on the capacity of laws to effectively influence behaviors, offering important insights for the design of policies aimed at eliminating harmful practices and promoting gender equality.
@techreport{bertelli2026fgmbans,
author = {Bertelli, Olivia and Lesueur, Mathilde and Mespl{\'e}-Somps, Sandrine},
title = {Female Genital Mutilation Bans: Natural Experiments from 19 Countries},
year = {2026},
institution = {HAL},
type = {Working Paper},
number = {hal-05694022},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05694022v1}
}
We show that reports on female genital mutilations are only weakly biased when individuals are surveyed after the adoption of a law prohibiting this practice. Moreover, mothers tend to underreport the fact that their daughters have undergone cutting.
@article{bertelli2025fgmbiases,
author = {Bertelli, Olivia and Lesueur, Mathilde and Mespl{\'e}-Somps, Sandrine},
title = {Female Genital Mutilations: An Analysis of Potential Reporting Biases},
journal = {Revue d'{\'e}conomie du d{\'e}veloppement},
year = {2025},
volume = {33},
number = {3},
pages = {67--73}
}
The paper analyses macro-fiscal and structural challenges in Iraq and discusses fiscal policy options that can boost employment opportunities and foster economic diversification, in line with the National Development Plan 2018–2022 targets and objectives.
Our analysis suggests that high unemployment rate of the youth, narrowed employment opportunity of the higher educated youth, weak private sector, low productivity of non-oil sectors and low education levels of a large share of unemployed people are some of the significant challenges of Iraq. On the demand side, public sector used to absorb the higher educated youth, which is no longer an option for many due to the pressing fiscal space concerns. Private sector capacity is low to provide enough decent opportunities and to attract higher educated people. As a result, unemployment rate among the higher educated youth increased. On the supply side, the analysis of education levels of all unemployed reveals that more than two-third of them have not completed secondary level of education. About one third of them have not completed primary level education. The situation would have worsened in recent years due to adverse effect of conflicts.
The role of fiscal policy is crucial to create conditions to addresses the mis-match in labour demand and supply in case of Iraqi economy. In the immediate period, increasing access to finance to small and medium entrepreneurs and agriculture, encouraging hiring for the private sector through wage subsidies, and strategizing public works programme for reconstruction can produce immediate livelihood opportunities, including for the higher educated youth. On the supply side, spending on skill development programmes, providing entrepreneurial and managerial skills, and investing in quality education and research are crucial for improving the quality of labour supply. Well-designed macro-fiscal frameworks are needed for meeting short and medium term policy objectives, including to incentivize economic diversification and to enhance fiscal space in a more sustainable manner. Time is now to assess different policy options and evidence-based analytical tools for making appropriate choices.
@techreport{sarangi2019iraq,
author = {Sarangi, Niranjan and Alameri, Alaaldin Mohammed and Lesueur, Mathilde and Akill, Rayan},
title = {Macro-Fiscal Policy toward Economic Diversification and Employment Generation in Iraq},
institution = {Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA)},
year = {2019},
url = {https://www.unescwa.org/sites/default/files/pubs/pdf/l1900993.pdf}
}