Natural Hazards Threat and Early Marriage for Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean

Natural hazards threat can shift marriage practices in ways that systematically harm young women and girls, as post-disaster conditions incentivize families to marry off daughters as an adaptation response against economic and physical insecurity. We study this link using geolocated representative samples from 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, a region with one of the highest early marriage rates in the world. We show that exposure to natural hazards is associated with higher prevalence of marriage among women under 18 and increased acceptance of these marriage practices among the general population. This relationship is mitigated by strong government institutions, which was previously unobserved in other regions. Our study demonstrates that rational climate adaptation behaviors at the household level can exacerbate within-household distributional inequalities, emphasizing the need for stronger institutional support structures that provide equitable means of adaptation.