Do Adult literacy and Married by 18 go together across countries?

Across 110 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.70, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives -0.69.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

There are not enough years of data within countries to check this over time.

Does Adult literacy cause Married by 18?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Adult literacy vs. Married by 18

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 110 countries, Adult literacy and Married by 18 rise and fall together at r = -0.70 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to -0.50 (q = 0.027, allowing for the many pairs tested). Much of the first figure is that both measures rise with national income, but a moderate negative link remains.

Comparing countries across the middle half of adult literacy, 71.4% to 97.3% of adults, married by 18 is better by 14.2% of women aged 20-24 at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 11.5% of women aged 20-24.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.702p = 1.4e-17 · 110 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.504p = 2.3e-8 · likely range [-0.63, -0.35]

p, allowing for regions0.002standard error 0.081 · 6 regions

Check for luck (q)0.027across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Adult literacy · % of adultslink with income +0.73 · high

Married by 18 · % of women aged 20-24link with income -0.60 · moderate

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.702	1.4e-17	110
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	-0.691	6.7e-17	110
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.504	2.3e-8	110
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.476	1.7e-7	110

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 110 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.197 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.523 (without BTN) to -0.471 (without TCD). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: TCD (+0.033).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	18	-0.49
Europe & Central Asia	15	-0.30
Latin America & Caribbean	20	-0.25
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan	13	-0.43
Sub-Saharan Africa	38	-0.65

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	37	-0.60
Middle third	36	-0.44
Richest third	37	-0.23

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	60	-0.42
Muslims	35	-0.55

By last european coloniser

	n	r
France	21	-0.66
Never a European colony	16	-0.47
Spain	18	-0.01
United Kingdom	33	-0.38

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.420 after dropping 3 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 0years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Not enough history inside each country to look at this over time. That needs countries measured for several years in a row, and at least one of these measures is measured too rarely.

The data

	% of adults	% of women aged 20-24	Years
Uzbekistan UZB	100%	3.4%	2022
Tuvalu TUV	100%	1.8%	2022, 2020
Russian Federation RUS	99.9%	6.2%	2021, 2017
Turkmenistan TKM	99.9%	6.1%	2022, 2024
Belarus BLR	99.9%	4.7%	2019
Armenia ARM	99.8%	5.3%	2023, 2016
Lithuania LTU	99.8%	0.2%	2011, 2022
Azerbaijan AZE	99.8%	15%	2023
Georgia GEO	99.7%	9.4%	2024, 2022
Tonga TON	99.5%	10.1%	2023, 2019
Moldova MDA	99.4%	12.2%	2014, 2012
Serbia SRB	99.3%	5.5%	2022, 2019
Romania ROU	99.2%	6.9%	2021
Argentina ARG	99.1%	15.5%	2020
Uruguay URY	98.9%	24.6%	2024, 2013

World Bank, World Development Indicators
World Bank, World Development Indicators

Sources

Adult literacy

Literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages 15 and above)

UNESCO Institute for Statistics · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

Reported only in census or survey years for most countries, so the data are sparse and uneven rather than yearly.

Married by 18

Women who were first married by age 18 (% of women ages 20-24)

UNICEF · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

From household surveys, mostly in lower-income countries, and only in years a survey ran. No year reaches sixty countries, so the latest value used is up to a decade old for some. Rich countries rarely report it at all, which shapes any link with income.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2010–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 6 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Adult literacy and Married by 18

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Adult literacy changes Married by 18, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.