WUNRN
Source: State of the World's
Children 2011 - UNICEF
ADOLESCENT GIRLS - ENDING THE
INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF POVERTY
The intergenerational transmission
of poverty is most apparent among adolescent girls. Educational disadvantage
and gender discrimination are potent factors that force them into lives of
exclusion and poverty, child marriage, and domestic violence. Around l/3 of the
girls in the develping world, excluding China, are married before age 18.
In a few countries, almost 30% of the girls under 15 are also married.
The poorest adolescent girls are
also the most likely to be married early, with rates of child marriage roughly
3 times higher than among their peers from the richest quintile of households.
Girls who marry early are most at risk of being caught up in the negative cycle
of premature childbearing, high rates of maternal mortality and
morbidity/sickness, and high levels of child undernutrition. And there is firm
evidence to suggest that child undernurtition is among the foremost factors
that undermine early childhood development.
Adoption of a life-cycle approach to
child development, with greater attention given to the care, empowerment, and
protection of adolescents, girls in particular, is the soundest way to break
the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
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