India Has 1.5 Million Underage Brides Every Year. Here’s How ’21’ Can Change That (Better India)

Better India published an article on the government’s campaign to prevent underage marriage for girls. A task force to examine issues related to age of motherhood, lowering Maternal Mortality Rate and improvement of nutritional levels was created. An IFPRI study, “Social, biological and programmatic factors link adolescent pregnancy to early childhood undernutrition: a path analysis of India’s 2016 National Family and Health Survey”, co-authored by IFPRI’s Phuong Hong Nguyen, Samuel Scott, Sumanta Neupane, and Purnima Menon; and FHI360’s Lan Mai Tran examined links between teenage pregnancy and child under-nutrition in India, and found, “Compared to adult mothers, teenage mothers were shorter, more likely to be underweight and anemic, less likely to access health services and had poorer complementary feeding practices. They also had lower education, less bargaining power and lived in poorer households with poorer sanitation.”