EA - What I thought about child marriage as a cause area, and how I've changed my mind by Catherine Fist

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: What I thought about child marriage as a cause area, and how I've changed my mind, published by Catherine Fist on January 31, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Summary:I have been working on a research project into the scale, tractability and neglectedness of child marriage. After 80 hours of research, I thought that there was a relatively strong case that effective altruist funding organisations that fund projects addressing international poverty should consider funding child marriage interventions. I then found a source that undermined a key premise: child marriage is clearly harmful across a number of health metrics. I describe in more detail my experience and findings below, and share some tips for those undertaking self-directed research projects to avoid making the mistakes I made (skip to ‘What I will do next time’ for these).Context:I had no direct experience researching child marriage, but I was interested to learn about effective interventions and whether it had potential as a possible cause area. I studied Political Science and International Relations at University, as well as some subjects on development, gender and economics, I have also worked as a government evaluator. My goal was to do some preliminary research and determine if child marriage was large scale problem, tractable and neglected. If so, I would share this research with effective altruist funders.My model:In October last year, I started a self-directed research project into the scale, tractability and neglectedness of child marriage. I read and collected dozens of sources, analyzed data, contacted a top researcher, compared effective interventions, built a mental model of what the charitable space looked like and identified potential interventions for EA support.I came to the following findings, based on around 80 hours of research:Scale/importanceChild marriage is a widespread practice that affects around 12 millions girls per year (UNICEF, 2022)Child marriage is a harmful practice that increases the risk of negative maternal and sexual health outcomes, domestic and sexual violence, and reduces the likelihood that a girl will complete school. This is the consensus position held by global development institutions (see meeting report from leading global institutions on child marriage UNFPA, 2019).TractabilityThere are cost effective interventions that work to prevent child marriage, e.g. the ‘cost per marriage averted’ ranged between US$159 and US$732 in this study (Erulkar, Medhin and Weissman 2017).The effect of child marriage on quality adjusted or disability adjusted life years has not been quantified so it difficult to compare cost effectiveness with other interventions (EA Forum explainer on these metrics).NeglectednessPopulation Council is a research body focussed on running quasi-experimental programs and creating scalable interventions (Population Council, date unknown).The lead investigator into child marriage at Population Council informed me that it is not currently running programs to prevent child marriage because of lack of funding.ConclusionEffective altruist funding organisations focused on international health and poverty should consider funding effective interventions to prevent child marriage at a large scale.What broke my modelEarlier this week, I decided it would be useful to try and quantify the harm of child marriage, or at least some of the harms, into commonly used metrics like quality adjusted or disability adjusted life years (QALYs or DALYs). I anticipated that this would be a key piece of information for EA funders, and it had not been done so far (finding 2b). In doing so, I came across a study that fundamentally challenged finding 1b: child marriage is an underlying cause of many harmful outcomes. Without strong evidence that child marri...