Costing Study on Child Marriage in Pakistan: A Country Level Report 2020-2021

The aim of this study is three-fold: firstly, to address the existing gap in the evidence on
incidence, socioeconomic impact, and associated costs of child marriage in Pakistan; secondly, to
inform policy debate and legal reform at the governmental level for eradication of child marriage
through evidence-based research; and thirdly, to generate a wider socio-political and normative
discourse around the issue of child marriage. This study contributes to the gaps in the existing
literature on cost of child marriage in Pakistan using a sample that is representative of the
national population. This study enables to better assess the costs of child marriage in the
Pakistani context, by gathering new information on the direct and indirect cost of child marriage
from 26 randomly selected districts in Punjab, Sindh, KP and Baluchistan to give a national picture
on the issue.