Reducing child marriages through CCTs: Evidence from a large-scale policy intervention in Indonesia

There is limited empirical evidence on whether poverty-targeted conditional cash transfers (CCTs) can be an effective tool in reducing child marriages. Employing a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity design that uses administrative roll-out data matched to the government’s poverty census and targeting database in Indonesia, we estimate that the country’s flagship CCT (PKH) reduced child marriages of girls in rural Indonesia by about 3.5 percentage points (about 40 percent). We conclude that CCTs may help break the persistent practice of child marriages.