Girls, Schooling and Early Marriage
How far a woman gets in school, and how young she marries, still depends on the district she was born in. Six maps, district by district.
The literacy divide
In the median Indian district, 74% of women can read. That middle figure hides a spread of nearly 63 points. In Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, 37% of women are literate. In Alappuzha, Kottayam and Pathanamthitta in Kerala, and in Serchhip in Mizoram, it is 99.7%.
Few stay past class 10
Reading is the floor. Staying in school is harder. In the median district only 39% of women have ten or more years of schooling. In Pakur, Jharkhand, and Nuh, Haryana, it is about one in seven. In Kottayam it is 86%.
Married before 18
Among women aged 20–24, the median district has 19% who married before 18. In 63 districts it is more than 40%, and the highest are in Medinipur East, West Bengal (58%), and Lakhisarai and Supaul, Bihar (56%). The map is close to a negative of the schooling map: in the quarter of districts where the fewest women reach class 10, the median early-marriage rate is 30%. In the quarter where the most do, it is 10%. The two move together. This map alone cannot say which drives which.
Bihar
Across Bihar's 38 districts, an average of 41% of women married before 18, and in 22 of them it is more than 40%. The belt runs across the north and east: Lakhisarai, Supaul, Madhepura and Araria are all above 50%. It is also where schooling is thinnest. Across Bihar's districts, only 29% of women have ten years of school on average.
West Bengal
West Bengal is the exception the national story usually misses. Its women's literacy is near the national middle, yet its early-marriage rate averages 39%, almost as high as Bihar's, and the consequence shows up a few years later. Among women aged 15–19, an average of 16% across its districts had already begun childbearing, three times the national median of 5%. It reaches 27% in Coochbehar and 25% in Medinipur West.
Kerala: what's possible
Same country, same survey. In Kerala no district has women's literacy below 94%, and the state averages 98%. On average 77% of women have ten or more years of school, and early marriage averages 5.5%. In Pathanamthitta the survey found none. It took decades to build, but it was built here, inside the same system.
Find your district
Every district on this map is in the Atlas, with these layers and dozens more from NFHS-5 and the Census. Open it, search for where you are from, and see how it compares.
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