Age at marriage,social norms,and female education in Nepal

We study the impact of age at marriage on female education. We hypothesize that in cultures where women marry young, parents discount the pecuniary benefits of educating girls; the earlier the anticipated age at marriage the greater this discount. We empirically test this effect using household data from Nepal. We control for potential endogeneity of age at marriage by exploiting variations in cultural norms regarding dowry and differences in the average age of female marriage among ethnicities and regions as instrumental variables. The econometric results support the hypothesis that female education is negatively affected by cultural norms that favor early marriage.     

Why the marriage squeeze cannot cause dowry inflation

An influential explanation for rising dowry payments is the “marriage squeeze”. The present paper shows this explanation to be internally inconsistent. The marriage squeeze argument for inflation relies on the fact that population growth leads to an excess supply of brides in the marriage market. This excess supply is resolved by some women postponing marriage, so that the average age of brides increases. In previous studies the argument is stated informally. Here, a matching model of marriage is developed to formally analyze the link between dowry payments and population growth. It is shown that a marriage squeeze cannot yield dowry inflation. In fact, when women who do not find matches at the ‘desirable’ marrying age re-enter the marriage market as older brides, a marriage squeeze is shown to imply dowry deflation. Population change is therefore not a promising explanation for the observed increases in dowry payments.     

Unemployment,marriage and divorce

In this article, we examine whether the business cycle plays a role in marriage and divorce. We use data on Spain, since the differences between recession and expansion periods across regions are quite pronounced in that country. We find that the unemployment rate is negatively associated with the marriage rate, pointing to a pro-cyclical evolution of marriage; however, the response of the divorce rate to the business cycle is mixed. Results show the existence of different patterns, depending on geography: divorce rates in coastal regions are pro-cyclical, while in inland regions divorces react to unemployment in a counter-cyclical way.     

Determinants of age at marriage in Karnataka during 1971-1981: a district level analysis

"In this paper we examined the interdistrict variations in mean age at marriage of males and females in Karnataka [India] in two points of time, 1971 and 1981, and also the possible factors influencing this variation....A multivariate analysis of the determinants of mean age at marriage in Karnataka showed that literacy rate, sex ratio of the population and percentage of villages electrified are important in explaining the regional and time variation in age at marriage of both sexes.... Our regression results indicated that a 10 per cent increase in female literacy rate is associated with approximately one-year increase in female age at marriage. However, neither the increase in female literacy nor the changes in the sex ratio of the population could explain all the increase in female age at marriage during 1971-81. This indirectly suggests that there was an increase in female age at marriage among all socio-economic groups."     

The timing of first marriage and subsequent life outcomes: Evidence from a natural experiment

We study the consequences of later marriage on subsequent life outcomes. China’s family planning policies in the early 1970s – before the One-Child Policy – regulated not only childbirth but also marriage. The recommended minimum marriage age of 25 years for men and 23 years for women was effectively relaxed when the government formally introduced the One-Child Policy and put greater emphasis on directly controlling fertility rather than marriage. Subsequently, we find that the marriage age, which had been increasing steadily since 1970, suddenly started to decline in the early 1980s. This policy shift provides us with an opportunity to apply a regression probability jump and kink design for the purpose of identification. Using data from the 2000 census, we establish that later-married men have fewer children and that later-married women are more likely to participate in the labor market. We find no consistent evidence that later marriage improves education, probably because most Chinese people marry after completing their education.     

Do children of the first marriage deter divorce?

In terms of economics, individuals divorce if their expected gains from marriage fall short of their expected utility outside the current marriage, and children represent a marriage-specific type of investment, which generally increases the value of marriage for the spouses. However, children may also disrupt marital stability as they will induce dramatic changes into the household allocation of money and time. In particular, children conceived before or after first marriage may be valued differently by the spouses and this may lead to marital conflicts. It is difficult to assign a priori the direction of the effect of children on marriage stability, and causality may run either way, as couples who anticipate a separation are more likely to have fewer children than those who are happy together, while children born before first marriage may be associated with a lower marriage attachment of their parents. Here, we follow an empirical approach and take advantage of the richness of the data on pre-marital history from the 24 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth79, to estimate the effect of children conceived before or after first marriage on marital stability. We find a significant deterrent effect of young children conceived during first marriage to the likelihood of divorce, while children conceived before first marriage are found to have a disruptive effect on marital stability.     

Female first marriage in East and Southeast Asia: a Kiefer-Neumann model

Many studies have shown that schooling levels of husband and wife are important determinants of household behavior in developing countries. This article asks how the schooling levels of husband and wife come to be associated with each other through the marriage market. The Kiefer-Neumann model of labor market search is adapted to marital search, the aim being to explain both the positive sorting on educational levels for spouses, and the positive relationship between female schooling and age at 1st marriage. World Fertility Survey data for Indonesia, Korea, and Malaysia are employed in the analyses.     

Class, gender and marriage

This paper estimates the contributions of differential fecundity, social heterogeneity, assortative matching and search frictions to aggregate marriage behavior in 18th century Quebec. The reduced form estimates show that a simple random matching model of the marriage market, in which there are gains to assortative matching and women may leave the marriage market at a higher rate than men, can explain these data. The estimates also show that the marriage market was segmented by social status.     

Forecasting Australian marriage rates

"The paper discusses the problem of modelling demographic variables for the purpose of forecasting. Two empirical model selection procedures are applied to suggest final form forecasting equations for Australian marriage rates. The suggested models are then assessed by comparing their post-sample forecast performance with that of univariate ARMA-type models of marriage rates which are regarded as approximations to marriage rate final equation models. In this instance the ARMA models are preferred for forecasting purposes. The properties of the ARMA model forecasts are then examined and the modelling strategy is contrasted with the regression method used by Withers."     

Shedding “light” on marriage: The influence of skin shade on marriage for black females

The inter-racial marriage gap that opened in the past 50 years is generally attributed to a decline in the availability of young black marriageable men. We contend that the associated shortage of desirable men in the marriage market provides those black men who are sought after with the opportunity to attain a high status spouse, which has placed a premium on black women with lighter skin. We provide evidence, based on data drawn from the Multi City Study of Urban Inequality, consistent with this hypothesis. Our theoretical analysis of the marriage market reveals that marriage promotion policies to increase the desire to marry on the part of young black women will serve to exacerbate the importance attached to skin shade.     

Women's education and marriage decisions: Evidence from China

The faster increase in education among women compared with men has been underexplored. Thus, using Chinese data, we evaluate the impacts of a plausibly exogenous increase in educational attainment on women's marriage decisions. An extra year of education does not change women's decision to marry and leads to a brief delay of 0.12 years in their marriage age on average, which is much smaller than the delay among men. Although more educated women and men both have improved labour market outcomes, which may have increased their patience, men experience larger income growth than women do. Moreover, declining physical attractiveness at least partly explains why the delay is less than 1 year. Overall, the results are more reliable after addressing the endogeneity issue.     

Notes on marriage markets with weak externalities

We consider marriage markets with externalities. We focus on weak externalities, that is, markets in which each agent is primarily concerned about her partner. We formalize and prove the claim that weak externalities are not so significant in the marriage market: in this case, the ω-core and the α-core coincide and are both nonempty. In addition, we show that, if we allow agents to block matchings without changing their mate, the results do not longer hold.     

The Effect of Education on the Timing of Marriage and First Birth in Pakistan

A rapid rise in women’s education levels, an increase in the age at marriage and an increase in the age at which they have their first child are key features of demographic transition in any country. Education is considered to be an essential component in this process because increases in educational attainment are likely to significantly affect both age at marriage and the duration between marriage and first birth - in particular increasing both the age at marriage and the time to first child. This paper uses individual level unit record data from Pakistan to examine the effect of education on the age at marriage and on the duration between marriage and first birth. We jointly estimate educational attainment, age at marriage and duration between marriage and first birth allowing for household level unobserved heterogeneity. We find that educational attainment increases the age at marriage but does not have a statistically significant effect on the duration between marriage and first birth. However, there is a threshold level of education that must be attained before educational attainment starts having an effect on the hazard of marriage.

     

Health insurance subsidies and the expansion of an implicit marriage penalty: a regional comparison of various means-tested programmes

Any subsidy provision for healthcare premiums, including those embedded in Affordable Care Act (ACA), has the potential to result in some couples facing an implicit penalty when married relative to unmarried. To illustrate such consequences of means-tested subsidies of health insurance premiums, we construct hypothetical households earning different levels of income who are eligible for current subsidies in the USA. and compare the estimated implicit marriage penalty faced by these households to the one faced by low-income households who are eligible for various means-tested programmes (e.g. TANF, WIC, SNAP) for each of the 48 contiguous states. We find that, like very low-income households, marriage can potentially penalize couples who receive health insurance premium subsidies by decreasing their overall disposable income by as much as 14%. We find that the ACA increases the number of households subject to marriage penalties embedded in means-tested programmes for low-income couples. This distortion will exist for any future health insurance premium subsidies that are means tested at the household income level.     

Effect of marriage registration on fertility and intrahousehold distribution in Thailand

Research has shown that changes in the marriage and family laws generally affect the formation, welfare distribution, and dissolution of marriage. However, little is known about the effects of constituting state-sanctioned marriage as opposed to informal marriage, where these laws do not fully apply. The present paper studied the effects of formal marriage registration on fertility outcomes and intrahousehold distribution among married couples in Thailand. Using data from the 1993 Survey for the Status of Women and Fertility in Thailand (SWAFT), it was found that marriage registration increases the number of children in a family and enhances women's contribution to and control of household finances. These results suggest that formal marriage registration promotes spousal cooperation and increases the welfare of women, supporting recent policy efforts in many developing countries in the development and expansion of vital registration systems.     

Class differences in marriage and fertility among Tokugawa villagers in Mino province

"This paper uses family reconstitution to derive indices of marriage and birth rates from observation of class differences in six villages on the Nobi plain (near Nagoya), [Japan]." The study covers the Tokugawa period, which lasted from 1603 to 1868.     

An inquiry into the state's role in marriage

The role of the state in the institution of marriage is explored. The author argues that government intervention in marriage is a means of avoiding large transaction costs between men and women. Such intervention is successful because marriage creates incentives that make private enforcement relatively costly and because marriages tend to be homogenous. The hypothesis is tested by examining U.S. state responses to changing divorce laws. The author concludes that such responses are consistent with the state increasing the social value of marriage by mitigating transaction costs.     

Heterogeneous human capital, uncertainty, and the structure of plans: A market process approach to marriage and divorce

The family has not been exempt from the multiple and rapidly occurring changes in the world today, particularly in market economies. The number of marriages has declined, age at first marriage has risen, the number of divorces has risen sharply, the fertility rate has declined, and the division of labor within families has changed, not always in ways that might be expected. This paper subjects these developments to a market process analysis, drawing on the voluminous work occurring in family economics. The Austrian theory of capital, with its emphasis on capital heterogeneity, is relevant. We place particular emphasis on the importance of the structure of human capital within marriage and how investments in such human capital have been affected by the uncertainty that these changes have produced. We also examine investments in marriage-specific human capital and in general human capital (particularly as they relate to childcare). This is then related to the incidence of divorce and the causes and spoils from divorce. The advent of no-fault divorce seems to have been seminal in this regard. We end with a brief glance at the future.

ACCOUNTING FOR THE TIMING OF FIRST MARRIAGE*

Among first marriages in the United States, grooms are on average 1.7 years older than their brides. Traditionally, this fact is explained by sex differences in income. We use a general equilibrium, overlapping generations search model economy to show instead that sex differences in fecundity are essential to account for the age gap at first marriage, whereas sex differences in income play a secondary role. Our model economy also accounts for other facts on the timing of first marriages that the literature has overlooked.     

Do not sell marriage short: Reply to strober

This paper explains why marriage market conditions may affect the participation of women in the labor force. In particular, it is claimed that changes in cohort size affect marriage market conditions and therefore women's labor-force participation. The paper also indicates how a theory of labor and marriage based on market analysis can possibly help women's causes. The paper first addresses theoretical issues raised by Strober. It then responds to her critique of empirical work.