India’s child marriage crisis is far from over, shows latest data

India has made notable progress in reducing child marriage in the past two decades, the latest National Family Health Survey indicates. But adolescent pregnancy has remained largely stagnant, indicating that some of the gains are a result of the legal age of marriage being 18 rather than changes in social norms.

The sixth round of the National Family Health Survey was conducted across 6,79,238 households in 2023-’24, and the findings were released in May. One in every five women, or 20.1%, between the ages of 20-24 were married before turning 18 in the NFHS-6, down from 23.3% during the NFHS-5, which was conducted between 2019-’21.

Long-term trends show that child marriage nearly halved from 47.4% in 2005-’06 during the NFHS-3 to 26.8% in 2015-’16, in the NFHS-4 findings.

Despite these gains, the scale of the problem is alarming. In terms of absolute numbers, millions of girls continue to enter marriage before reaching adulthood. The survey findings show that India’s target to eliminate child marriage by 2030 is far from reality, and the country will need to accelerate its efforts.

The negligible decline in adolescent pregnancy points to the continuing challenges of tackling child marriage: 6.7% of women and teenagers between the ages of 15-19 were already mothers or pregnant at...

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