A recent study in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh showed nearly 13% of 22-year-old women were married before the legal age of 18. These surveyed women – 1,826 women aged 22 years – also had a child by 19 years of age. The report also indicated that the education status of the woman’s mother had a significant impact in this regard.
The worrying data was from round seven of the Work and Family Lives: Young Lives Survey released on May 30. The data was collected between August 2023 and January 2024. The Young Lives Survey is conducted by the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID). The survey has been documenting poverty and inequality among 12,000 children in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam since 2022.
In India, the study focused on undivided Andhra Pradesh, covering 20 mandals. Thirteen of these mandals are now in Andhra Pradesh, and seven are in Telangana. The survey provides a comparative overview of marital and labour indicators among two groups of young persons studied over 20 years.
Further, the report from round seven refers to the two groups: the Younger Cohort, who were 22 years old, and the Older Cohort, who were 29 years old, in 2023-2024 when the survey was conducted. It also compared the changes in socio-economic status among the two cohorts when they were both 22 years old, respectively.
Data from the 2023-2024 survey was compared with the data collected in 2016 from the Older Cohort, when they were 22 years old. A total of 2,673 young people were surveyed: 1,826 in the Younger Cohort and 847 in the Older Cohort.
In the period of seven years separating the two cohorts, the study found that the transition from education to the labour market occurred later for the Younger Cohort compared to the Older Cohort.
In both cohorts, the study found that young people were typically engaged in ‘poor-quality jobs’, which refer to jobs without a written contract that demand long working hours.
Marital status
The report stated that 12.5% of women from the Younger Cohort were found to have been married before the legal age. Only 3.2% of the men in this cohort were married before the legal age. It may be recalled that the legal age for marriage in India for women is 18 years and 21 years for men.
Women were far more likely than men to be married and have experienced parenthood in the Younger Cohort. By 22 years of age, 47% of women were married or had a child, while only 5.8% of men of this age were married or had a child. Also, among the Younger Cohort, 17.9% of the women had a child by 19 years, compared to 0.8% of men of the same age.
The survey also found that among participants whose mother had less formal
education and were from the most economically vulnerable households, were more likely to be married and have a child early.
Around 28% of women from the economic bottom tercile (one-third) were married or had a child by 22 years of age, compared to 16.6% in the top tercile.
31.4% of 22-year-old women, whose mothers had had no education, were married or had a child. This fell to 3.8% among 22-year-old women whose mothers had had at least 10 years of education or more.
This trend of positive impact due to higher maternal education holds drastically in both the case of women married off before the legal age and in the case of having a child by 19 years of age.
No woman from the Younger Cohort was found to have been married before legal age if their mothers had had at least ten or more years of education. In comparison, 10.7% of women from the Younger Cohort were married before the legal age if their mothers had had no education.
Again, regarding women who had a child by 19 years of age, the percentage was only 1.3 if their mothers had had ten or more years of education. Inversely, 12% of women from the Younger Cohort had a child by 19 years of age if their mothers had had no education.
Labour
According to the report, participants whose mothers had less formal education and those born in the poorest households were more likely to be employed but less likely to have a written contract. Participants were asked about their employment status in the week preceding the time they were interviewed.
Among the Older Cohort, 75.6% were employed compared to only 53.2% in the Younger Cohort. Only an average of 8.3% had an employment contract in the Older Cohort. This was even lower among the Younger Cohort, with 6.7%.
Further, the Younger Cohort spent an average of 43.5 hours per week at work. And 36% of them worked more than 48 hours per week.
Caste was found to be an influencing factor both in terms of being employed and having an employment contract. Notably, the percentage of both cohorts who had work contracts was seen to rise steadily in relation to their caste location.
From Scheduled Caste (SC) communities, 76.4% of the Older Cohorts and 50% of the Younger Cohorts were employed. Only 8.2% of the Older Cohorts and 4.2% of the Younger Cohorts had employment contracts.
Among Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities, 70.3% of the Older Cohorts and 56.7% of the Younger Cohorts were employed. Of these participants, only 7% of the Older Cohorts and 5.2% of the Younger Cohorts had employment contracts.
Among the Backward Classes (BC), 78.1% of the Older Cohorts and 53.3% of the Younger Cohorts were employed. Of the Older Cohorts, 8% had employment contracts, compared to 6.4% of the Younger Cohorts.
Participants from the general castes were found to have the highest percentage of contractual work. 72.1% of the Older Cohorts and 53.1% of the Younger Cohorts were employed. But compared to SC, ST and BC communities, 9.7% of the Older Cohorts and 10.7% of the Younger Cohorts had employment contracts.
The family wealth index of both cohorts also played a significant role in employment status. The wealth index was divided into bottom, middle and top terciles for the study.
Around 76.6% of the Older Cohort and 63.0% of the Younger Cohort from the bottom tercile were employed. In the top tercile, the difference with regard to the Older Cohort was only marginal, at 72.6%, but there was a substantial difference among the Younger Cohort, with only 46.6% being employed.
Maternal education was the third important indicator of access to contractual work.
Only 3.5% of the Younger Cohort and 5.6% of the Older Cohort whose mothers had no formal education were employed on a written contract. In comparison,
52.9% of the Younger Cohort and 23.1% of the Older Cohort whose mothers had ten or more years of formal education had written contracts.
Additionally, the report points out that agricultural work was a more important source of employment for women, with 41% of all employed women engaged in this sector, compared to only 28% of all employed men.
Gender gap
A widening gender gap in employment was noted among the Younger Cohort over the entire period of study. The latest report takes into account previous data to map the gender gap from the ages of 15 years old to 22 years old. It is also a worrying factor that 34% of 15-year-old boys and 24% of 15-year-old girls were found to be employed.
By 18 years, 77% of boys were employed compared to 42% of girls.
The COVID-19 pandemic saw a fall in employment rates of both men and women, but the gender gap persisted. Only 25% of 19-year-old women were found to be employed compared to 60% of the men. By 20 years, 20% of women were employed, while 56% of men were employed. This gap continued by the time the cohort reached 22 years of age. Only 30% of women were employed compared to 66% of men.
In this regard, the gender gap can also be seen in the hours of unpaid care work among 22-year-olds. Among the Younger Cohort, 22-year-old women spent an average of 5.7 hours per day in unpaid care work compared to only two hours per day for men of the same age.
The gender gap in the number of hours of unpaid care work was marginally wider between men and women in the Older Cohort when they were 22 years old. At the time, the women had spent 5.6 hours per day in unpaid care work, while the men had spent only 1.4 hours per day in unpaid care work, creating a wider gender gap of 4.26 hours per day.