The United States has a child marriage problem – but a simple solution is available.
Nearly 300,000 children — a few as young as 10 — were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018.
That was one of the key findings of our
newly released study on the extent of child marriage in the U.S., which we conducted with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. You might have seen some of our other findings in the op-ed article we published over the weekend in
Insider, including:
- Some 60,000 marriages since 2000 occurred at an age, or with a spousal age difference, that should have constituted a sex crime under the relevant state’s laws.
- 96% of the children married were age 16 or 17, typically not old enough to file for divorce or enter a domestic violence shelter.
- Most of the minors who married were girls wed to adult men an average of four years older.
These findings confirm the importance of the growing national movement we lead to eliminate child marriage in every U.S. state and at the federal level.
