Hello, welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service, your statistical guide to the

numbers in the news and in life. I'm Charlotte McDonald and I'm Jordan

Dunbar.

Later in the program, Tim Harford speaks to data scientist Kathy O'Neill about bad algorithms. But first, lawyer listener Sebastian emailed about a number he spotted on the BBC website.

Dear more or less, I do not doubt the tragedy under the age of 15 is married every seven seconds.

That would mean more than 4.5 million girls under the age of 15

married every year.

Is our world really that awful?

As Sebastian says, every child forced into marriage is bad.

But is that figure correct?

It comes from a report produced by the charity Save the Children and was reported around the world.

By the BBC, CNN, the Australian newspaper, Pakistan's Express Tribune and many others.

And as Sebastian says, if a girl under 15 is married every seven seconds,

that would mean that more than 4.5 million girls marry each year.

As you can probably imagine, gathering data on child marriage isn't

easy. Not least because in many parts of the world, it's illegal. Save the Children's

report use numbers from UNICEF, the United Nations Children's

Fund.

UNICEF used international household surveys, which it helps fund in more than 100

low and middle income countries.

We collect information on child marriage for all women age 15 to 49.

However, we tend to report on the prevalence of child marriage among women age 2024.

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