The State of World Population 2016

10 facts about 10-year-old girls

1. There are approximately 60 million 10-year-old girls today. About 35 million of them live in countries with high levels of gender inequality.
2. Investments that empower 10-year-old girls can triple a girl’s lifetime income, increase a nation’s economic growth and lead to a cycle of healthier, better educated children.
3. Education of girls is the world’s best investment, yet 62 million adolescent girls are not in school today.
4. Each additional year of a girl’s schooling can translate into a 10 per cent increase in wages later in life.
5. Every day, an estimated 47,700 girls under 18 are married in developing countries.
6. 16 million girls between ages 6 and 11 will never start school. That’s twice the number of boys.
7. HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among adolescent girls worldwide. Suicide is the the second-leading cause of death.
8. An adolescent girl dies as a result of violence every 10 minutes.
9. 10-year-old girls are subjected to countless abuses linked to gender inequality, like child marriage, female genital mutilation, forced or coerced sex, unintended pregnancy, or the denial of education.
10. Child marriage accounts for up to a third of girls who drop out of secondary school. It also imposes additional costs on society through greater population growth and lower wages for women.

10 facts from around the world

1. India loses $56 billion a year in potential earnings because of adolescent pregnancy, high secondary school dropout rates and joblessness among young women.
2. In Asia and the Pacific, at the regional level, there are 111 boys for every 100 girls.
3. Sub-Saharan Africa hosts 55 per cent of the world’s out-of-school children and 52 per cent of its out-of-school adolescents.
4. Eliminating child marriage in Niger alone could produce benefits of more than $25 billion from 2014 to 2030.
5. In West and Central Africa, about eight girls are in secondary school for every 10 boys.
6. An educated, healthy 10-year-old girl today in Morocco or Costa Rica will have earned about $30,000 more by the time she reaches 25 than a peer who has not completed secondary education and is in poor health.
7. Latin America and the Caribbean are the only region where more girls go to secondary school than boys.
8. In Ethiopia, for every 10 boys enrolled in secondary school, only six girls are enrolled.
9. In some sub-Saharan African countries, girls between 15 and 19 are five times more likely to contract HIV than boys.
10. In Turkey, there are 653,000 ten-year-old girls. An educated, healthy 10-year-old girl there will have earned about $61,000 more by the time she reaches 25 than a peer who has not completed secondary education and is in poor health.