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Economics
Poverty deeply intertwines with child marriage. Coerced subservience deems women an economic burden—a liability.
Gender mores confine women to participate in limited economic activity (primarily domestic service) and thus inevitably precipitate financial imbalance in impoverished, rurality;
women act as an additional economic figure to support without significant income return.
Dowry:
a traditional (mandatory) payment of cash, property, or jewelry offered to the marital family in exchange for the bride.
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Ineffective legislative enforcement of the Dowry Prohibition Act (1961) perpetuates the practice of dowry. In various communities, the bride’s age dictates the amount of dowry asked: the younger the bride, the lower the dowry. Child marriage, then, offers an opportunity to escape paying a high dowry. Often dowry seems like a worthy, one-time investment when compared to consistent economic provision for a daughter: a perceived burden.
Amidst reliance on subsistence economies coupled with unavoidable financial barriers exacerbates the prevalence of child marriage. Families often succumb to dowry-death: a woman's murder or forced suicide to disputes over her dowry.
Dowry-related violence murders over 20 women daily
--The Global Citizen
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