ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates the domains of law, policy, and demography, which together have been the most prominent sites of intervention and knowledge creation around child marriage in the twenty-first century. Of these three fields, only the sphere of the law has seen considerable debate among feminists. In the work of demography, the new language of the rights of the child, which make any marriage below 18 a violation, go hand in hand with fears of escalating fertility rates and calculations of reproductive health risks. The really critical question is: How much statistical weight can age justifiably bear in relation to a host of other factors making for the vulnerability of girls who marry too young?
