English  Français

Child marriage in Lao PDR

Siow Li Lai, University of Malaya

According to UNICEF, child marriage is defined as the marriage of a child under age 18, and the number has reached over 70 million girls worldwide as of today. In line with the declaration of the United Nations, the practice of child marriage is treated as a human rights and children’s rights violation. Child marriage remains prevalent in Lao PDR, and in fact is the highest among ASEAN countries. Child marriage is likely to expose women to various sexual and reproductive problems, and these will bring about adverse effects on both the women and their children. Hence, this paper seeks to examine the correlates of child marriage in Lao PDR. The data for this paper came from the 2017 Lao Social Indicator Survey. Binary logistic regression showed that place of residence, education, wealth index, and internet usage were significant determinants of child marriage in Lao PDR. Greater efforts are required to provide reproductive health information and communities activities to the disadvantaged groups to equip them with basic life skills with the aim of reducing early sexual debut and eventually early marriage.

Keywords: Family demography, Demographic and social surveys

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session P2.