Early marriage and maternal health care utilisation: Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

We use the recursive bivariate probit (RBVP) model to estimate the effects of early marriage on the utilisation of maternal health services in five sub-Saharan countries: Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Chad. Based on recent Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), we find that a woman who married before age 15 was 17 percentage points less likely to use prenatal services; and marrying before age 16 reduced that likelihood by 9.6 percentage...