In rural areas of Bangladesh, most girls marry at a very young age -- not because they wish to, but because their families cannot afford to send them to school.
In some districts, however -- Narshingdi, for instance -- that is changing. Girls' enrollment in secondary schools has more than doubled. In three years, the proportion of married women in the 16-to-19 age bracket dropped from 72 to 64 percent, and in the 13-to-15 bracket from 29 to 14 percent. Families in those districts are getting smaller, and more women are employed, with higher incomes. The headmaster of one Narshingdi school says that when he began teaching 30 years ago he could not have imagined so many girls attending school.
The benefits will reach far beyond those individual girls. The results will include lower birth rates, better health practices, fewer children dying in infancy and a healthier and more productive labor force.