California could soon end child marriage after years of debate

Previously, children could get married in the state with judicial approval and the consent of one parent. California was one of only three states that had no minimum age to marry. (The others are Mississippi and New Mexico.) Nearly 24,000 minors were married in California between 2000 and 2018 — making California the state with the second-highest number of child marriages in the country, according to data from Unchained At Last, an advocacy nonprofit. Texas has the most, with nearly 42,000 children married in the same time period. In 2017, Texas banned child marriage in most cases, allowing it only for people 16 and older who are legally emancipated from their parents or guardians.

Pellerin said she sees momentum building across the country to end child marriage, and she saw it as an opportunity to make change in California. Before 2018, child marriage was legal in all 50 states. Since then, 18 states have passed bans, and federal lawmakers have introduced a bill that would provide states with a practical roadmap to end the practice.

“Studies have shown that kids that get married lack financial independence,” Pellerin said. “They end up lacking access to education, social opportunities and autonomy. I mean, it’s considered a human rights abuse on a global stage.”

Girls are far more likely to be wed as children than boys: 86 percent of minors wed between 2000 and 2018 were girls, Unchained found. And girls who marry before they turn 18 are about 50 percent more likely to drop out of high school and four times less likely to finish college — actions that are associated with higher poverty rates later in life. A recent report led by Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Meta and founder of Lean In Foundation, and Columbia University highlighted the global cost of inaction on the issue — estimating that child marriage costs the world up to $175 billion per year from lost productivity and increased health risks.