The inequality trap

The link between social exclusion and early motherhood is unmistakable: when protection systems fail to ensure access to health services, effective protection from violence, and safe educational environments, a cycle emerges that is difficult to break.

Recent data confirms the scale of the challenge. Although births among adolescents aged 15 to 19 have declined by nearly 20 percent over the past five years, the overall magnitude remains critical. In 2023 alone, 41,710 adolescents became mothers — the equivalent of five births every hour across the country. This reality is not accidental; it reflects the convergence of structural barriers, including the limited implementation of comprehensive sexuality education, restricted access to modern contraception, and limits on bodily autonomy and decision-making, all of which undermine adolescents’ ability to plan their futures.

This accumulation of disadvantages translates into a measurable gap. As the following chart illustrates, place of residence and income are decisive risk factors: where poverty and rurality intersect, the likelihood of early pregnancy increases significantly, confirming inequality as the primary driver of adolescent motherhood.

For girls like Maribel, the persistence of sexual violence reveals a structural failure in protection. Since 2019, the pattern has remained unchanged: more than 1,000 girls aged 10 to 14 give birth each year. In 2023, the figure reached 1,357 — four girls becoming mothers every day. This coercive reality places their lives and health at serious risk and calls for a strengthened state response centered on prevention, the right to live free from violence, and access to comprehensive support services.

Yet this reality is not immutable. Ayacucho demonstrates that progress is possible with sustained political commitment. This Andean region, historically shaped by poverty and geographic dispersion, has achieved what once seemed unlikely: reducing its rate of motherhood among girls and adolescents by nearly half in just six years — from 29 births per 1,000 in 2019 to 14.4 in 2025. This decline was not the result of chance, but of aligned political leadership, dedicated financing, and multisectoral coordination under a sustained framework of technical cooperation.

Today, Ayacucho stands as proof of concept for the rest of the country. In October 2024, this approach was anchored in public policy through the approval of the Regional Plan for the Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy. The experience outlines a clear pathway forward: when political leadership secures financing and drives coordinated action across government, civil society, academia, and international partners, structural inequalities can be challenged.

The evidence is unequivocal — multistakeholder collaboration is indispensable to safeguarding the future of younger generations. The imperative is to ensure that Maribel’s story is not repeated, and that no girl or adolescent sees her life trajectory defined by the absence of conditions necessary to exercise her rights.

From sexual violence to forced motherhood

While Ayacucho serves as a proof of concept, the reality for girls in remote Amazonian territories remains critical. In places such as Condorcanqui, where Maribel lives, adolescence is besieged by geographic isolation, structural barriers, and pervasive violence.

For a 12-year-old girl like Maribel, pregnancy is never a choice but the direct consequence of sexual violence. Although Peruvian law classifies such acts as grave crimes, persistent impunity often leaves girls affected by this violence without access to justice or reparation.

This violence triggers life-threatening health risks. With bodies physiologically immature for gestation, girls face an obstetric risk three to five times higher than that of adult women. For Maribel, this danger is not an abstract statistic but an existential threat at an age that should be defined by growth and possibility. At twelve, motherhood is experienced not as hope, but as a profound physical and emotional disruption.

National data underscores the gravity of this risk: in 2024, adolescents accounted for 14.5 per cent of all maternal deaths in the country — an alarming increase that exposes gaps in protection and care.

Protecting girls like Maribel demands a paradigm shift. Preventing forced motherhood requires a coordinated, multisectoral protection system capable of dismantling the social norms that normalize sexual violence, while guaranteeing effective access to justice. Equally, it requires enabling environments with comprehensive health services — including mental health and emergency care — that support survivors in restoring their bodily autonomy and rebuilding their life trajectories, thereby interrupting the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Investing in girls is investing in Peru

Adolescent pregnancy carries a cumulative opportunity cost that constrains economic growth. Early school dropout weakens young mothers’ labor market prospects and incurs a lifetime earnings penalty, with incomes up to three times lower than those of peers who delay motherhood. At scale, these individual losses translate into a macroeconomic impact equivalent to 0.14 percent of national GDP. Put differently, the country forfeits more economic value each year from the opportunity cost of adolescent pregnancy than it collects in value-added tax revenues from the entire mining sector.

Public investment in prevention remains disproportionately low. National budget allocations for preventing adolescent pregnancy account for just 4 percent of the economic losses associated with inaction. In effect, Peru continues to absorb the costs of response — including health expenditures, reduced fiscal revenues, and persistent poverty — rather than investing in prevention that would allow girls like Maribel to pursue their life trajectories.

Prevention is not expenditure; it is a high-return economic strategy. Every dollar invested in preventing adolescent pregnancy generates an estimated return of between 15 and 40 dollars in economic and social benefits. The choice is fundamentally strategic: invest now in the human capital accumulation of girls or continue to bear the long-term costs of entrenched inequality.