[svnt]

This is not a one-off study. There is a long record of similar studies showing that the number of years of education a girl receives delays marriage, and while longer schooling delays marriage longer, it is not just because girls are busy. Schools inherently provide female social support, and education provides increased self-reliance.

This is pretty easy to reason through: if a girl knows nothing about the world, a safe place for her to be is with someone who knows more. If a girl knows how to function in the world on par with a boy/man, or at least has visibility into a future where she can, there is no longer that fear/dependence cycle locked in.

eg How Much Education Is Needed to Delay Women's Age at Marriage and First Pregnancy? https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/...

The power of education to end child marriage - UNICEF DATA https://data.unicef.org/resources/child-marriage-and-educati...

[flossly]

Indeed, we know this, "educate girls to fix society", already for many years. The other "societal fix we know for year to work" is reducing economic inequality.

https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson_how_economic_ine...

[wat10000]

I suspect there would be broad agreement across the political spectrum that more education means later marriage and later first pregnancy. The disagreement would mostly be over whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

[svnt]

Complication from pregnancy is the leading cause of death in 15-19 year old girls, and second in 10-14, only because many of them are not yet able to conceive. We have excellent data on this.

Later marriage/first pregnancy is clearly a good thing.

https://www.who.int/health-topics/adolescent-health/pregnanc...

[mothballed]

When I looked up causes of death in Nigeria, malaria blew away anything maternal related[]. Not that I would want to die of either.

Another big one was HIV/AIDS. I guess it depends on cultural factors whether early marriage might reduce the number of partners that could introduce HIV/aids. If non-married people are less monogamous it's conceivable the increased risk of HIV/AIDS could overpower the risks of whatever additional childbirth is associated with marriage.

Also note pollution was one of the bigger risks present in Nigeria. So as people get educated to go slave away in a dirty factory (or a city full of them where educated people work) it might actually be worse for their health than staying at home and marrying into some pastoral herding tribe or something.

[] https://ourworldindata.org/profile/health/nigeria

[trollbridge]

And more roads means more pollution. It is questionable if the answer is “make everyone dependent on cars”, although doing so obviously improves some outcomes.

[avadodin]

Even if true, your "leading cause of death" statement is meaningless as young women are not generally going to die from any other cause. If you "solve" teenage pregnancy, it might well become swallowing food without chewing.

I bet pregnancy is not the "leading cause of death" among 80yo women. That must be the best age to start having children.

Anyways, I couldn't find the reference to your statement by following the link but I found that risk of pre–eclampsia(only clearly stated risk to the mother) and lower birth weight is higher than in 20–24 —no mention of other age ranges.

The report mentions that adolescent childbirth is correlated with low socio–economic status and education. Did they control for that when doing the risk assessment? It is not clear.

No mention of genetic risk to the offspring. No mention of the lives of the offspring that were "terminated" in the making of the non–pregnancy statistics.

Just some vague "abuse" statements that do not include figures for abuse of non–female young people.

WHO, indeed.

[true_religion]

I also was curious about this so I did some research.

It looks like age 20 to 34 has the lowest mortality rate. Older or younger than that has higher mortality.

And since 14 to 18 as a cohort are all minors, it’s completely reasonable that parents and society in general discourages this activity.

Taking risks at 35 and 14 are treated differently.

[avadodin]

Understandably so.

But what about 18 and 33?

Beyond rare risk of death to the mother, I think the health of the child to be born and the potential for younger siblings is an important consideration since we are talking about reproduction.

In Europe, marriage and pregnancies below 18 were rare and people did use to average 21 before "female education" as well but other cultures differed and differ and I don't know to what extent it is appropriate to have "global" organizations mess with their reproductive lives from a Western perspective whether it has 1820s views or 2020s views.

[breezybottom]

It's clear to you but that's still a value judgement. It's not as clear if you discount female autonomy.

[ascorbic]

The mother and baby are more likely to die. I don't think wanting to prevent that is a value judgement.

[stinkbeetle]

No of course it isn't nobody suggested it was.

The value judgement is saying the changes you want are worth doing because they might reduce it. Social and personal choices are weighed all the time that include risks to lives, suggesting something that might reduce risk does not end the debate.

We would generally want to prevent people dying in horrible aviation disasters too, we could do that by ceasing non essential air travel.

[breezybottom]

Death being bad is a value judgement.

[Ar-Curunir]

If the value that the “other side” is espousing is that “it’s okay for girls to die giving birth”, well, we can safely discount that as a valid position to hold in modern society.

Some things are just absolutely bad.

[chlorodose]

I believe nothing is *absolutely bad* in modern society.

For example, the best way to stop pregnancy-related deaths is to forcely termination any high-risk pregnancy regardless of the pregnant woman's own wishes. But seems no one would agree.

[svnt]

I take your meaning but I don't agree it is only a value judgement. It is also an evolutionary and social force.

[wat10000]

I completely agree, but there's a decent chunk of people out there who don't.

[watwut]

Lets stop pretending there is an agreement that pain or harm to girls matters.

[BobaFloutist]

Sure, but this provides an argument for postponing marriage (and educating women) at least a little even if you want to coldly maximize birthrate with no regards to their feelings.

[flossly]

Smaller families, better education level of the next gen, ...

But yeah, if you are afraid of a war you want your group to be big, uneducated, easy to manipulate and expendable.

[eastbound]

The gender gap in compassion is always surprising. There is never “educate boys to fix society”. The argument is as follows: “But girls get raped, so we need to save them” “Who rapes girls?” “Boys” “What opportunities do they have?” “Drugs, army, and the street” “Wouldn’t they too deserve to be given care, notably the care that was too given to girls?” “No, [various reasons]” “But don’t you care that girls get raped by boys?” “Yes” “So what do you do?” “Take care of the girls”.

[mothballed]

Males want to attract females and get married. They way they can do this is by achieving money/power. If education is profitable and possible, then executing it takes care of itself. If it's not possible, well it was a moot cause anyway unless some outsider will come in and help.

Females are valuable just for their ... personal assets ... so bootstrapping is a little harder because they have intrinsic value they can fall back on (someone is going to get angry at me for saying that, but it's just the way it is). If I can just marry a rich man I might be okay with that, or whoever makes the decisions for me might be okay with that. You have to get someone to come in and force enough of them to feel like they're a failure for not getting an education and then eventually they'll socially reinforce it themselves without further outside influence.

I believe this is why it's much higher yield for the enlightened outsider to come in and declare their moral and intellectual superiority and tell the females they are losers (or less happy, or less independent, whatever the politically correct terminology is used nowadays) for not getting an education, and get (read: bribe) their families to put them into it.

[sapphicsnail]

> Females are valuable just for their ... personal assets ...

Women can pretty much do anything men can do. How is a wealthy, financially successful woman less valuable than a man?

[deadeye]

I'll play this out...

Every human is equally valuable in the moral sense.

But value is subjective when we are talking about relationships and we can only generalize about this value.

High income women are more valuable to low income men.

High income men already have money. They value other attributes.

And this is the paradox successful women can face. Their success doesn’t attract the mates they desire, quite the opposite. And worse, they were never told that. They were told the opposite.

[sapphicsnail]

I've been told men are intimidated by successful women my whole life. Women aren't being tricked into having careers.

The whole framing of "women are only valuable for their personal assets" only makes sense from the perspective of a certain kind of man. My whole point is that this is entirely subjective. People talk about it like it's the natural state of things but it's a cultural belief.

[programjames]

Where exactly was that stated or implied?

[sapphicsnail]

How do you interpret,

"Females are valuable just for their ... personal assets ..."

[lotsofpulp]

Wild comment.

> If I can just marry a rich man I might be okay with that, or whoever makes the decisions for me might be okay with that

Fyi, “just marry” incorporates a lot of things would disqualify the use of the term “just”. The least of which is pregnancy and the risks thereof, especially in these poorer societies without healthcare.

[programjames]

You say this as if you are providing new information. I suspect >99% of the Hacker News population, including the commenter above you, already knows this.

[dwaltrip]

Right, no man has ever attracted a woman by displaying pro-social attributes.

> Females are valuable just for their ... personal assets.

2018 called and they want their red pill back.

——

When’s your book coming out? I’m dying to learn more about “the way it is”.

——

P.S. I say this with full sincerity: If you are open to advice, try reading “Models: Attract Women Through Honest”. It will expand your mind.

It was recommended to me by a friend who managed to un-redpill himself.

[lazyasciiart]

What? You think it is unfair that when boys go to school and girls don't, people target girls for help attending school? Twisted.