  A relationship between the Coulomb inclusive break-up probability and the
radiative capture reaction rate for weakly-bound three-body systems is
established. This direct link provides a robust procedure to estimate the
reaction rate for nuclei of astrophysical interest by measuring inclusive
break-up processes at different energies and angles. This might be an
advantageous alternative to the determination of reaction rates from the
measurement of $B(E1)$ distributions through exclusive Coulomb break-up
experiments. In addition, it provides a reference to assess the validity of
different theoretical approaches that have been used to calculate reaction
rates. The procedure is applied to $^{11}$Li ($^{9}$Li+n+n) and $^6$He
($^{4}$He+n+n) three-body systems for which some data exist.
