Internet exposure during adolescence and age at first marriage

The expansion of the internet has provided people with more channels to obtain information. New information about the world and other lifestyles provided by the internet may affect teenagers’ attitudes and change their behavior of first marriage in adulthood. Using data from China Family Panel Studies, this paper explores a national policy reform of the internet in 2000 and combines a difference-in-difference framework with a discrete-time hazard model to estimate the impact of internet exposure in adolescence on women’s age at first marriage. The results show that internet exposure during adolescence significantly reduces the risk of women’s age at first marriage. No change is observed in men of similar age. Further analysis of the mechanism shows that women’s education or search costs in the marriage market cannot explain the findings. In contrast, women’s traditional attitudes toward gender roles vary with internet exposure. Their gender role attitudes become more egalitarian, and their attitudes toward marriage become more open. Exposure to the internet also makes women even more reluctant to enter marriage, an institution that is increasingly differentiated by traditional gender roles.     

Love,life, and “leftover ladies” in urban China: Staying modernly single in patriarchal traditions

The population in urban China has shown rising age at first marriage and declining marriage rates, especially among college educated professional women who are in their late 20s or their 30s. We investigate the determinants of marriage formation for urban women aged 27 or above who tend to be termed “leftover ladies”. We estimate a recursive mixed-equation model to describe correlated profiles of career, education and marriage. Conventional social norms on gender, especially patriarchy, still prevail. Factors that are not favorable for a conventionally wifely role reduce women's likelihood of marriage. In particular, we reveal a “marital college-discount” of college education. It reduces the probability of marriage by 2.88%–3.6% and a postgraduate degree further oppresses it by 8.4%–10.4%. Favorable characteristics such as facial attractiveness only raises the likelihood of marriage formation for non-college educated women, while pushing up non-marriage probabilities for women with at least college degrees.     

Matchmaking and moneymaking in a patronage society: the first duke and duchess of Chandos,c. 1712–351

The focus of this article is on the contribution of an early eighteenth‐century aristocratic marriage partnership to the family economy, and particularly to the non‐co‐resident, extended family. Through a study of the first duke and duchess of Chandos, the active involvement of a husband and wife in furthering the marriages of close kin is highlighted. By outlining the strategy and tactics adopted and discussing their motivation, the article challenges the view that kinship had seriously declined in importance by the early eighteenth century. The Brydgeses did more than broker marriages for close female relatives; they groomed the young women, helped build up and manage their portions using new and modern forms of making money such as investing in the stock market, and found them husbands. The marriages of these young women were a form of patronage. Motivation for this involvement included familial affection and responsibility but extended to increasing and consolidating the duke's socio‐political influence through the patronage system and to limiting the potential drain on his estate. The duchess had a vested interest in this: it raised her status within family, connection, and society. The young women concerned, and their parents, were not always grateful for this patronage.     

Gender norms and marriage satisfaction: Evidence from China

This paper examines the association between the traditional gender division norm — “men are breadwinners, and women are homemakers” — and the marriage satisfaction of each gender using Chinese couple-level data. The results reveal that married couples tend to be less satisfied with their marriage if the wife earns more than the husband. Moreover, it seems that the drop in the husband's marriage satisfaction matters more for the drop in the couple's overall marriage satisfaction. By exploring the difference between husbands and wives in their attitudes in terms of economic contribution and housework contribution, we confirm that husbands may have a specific self-image regarding the traditional gender division norm, and can also respond to the wives' gender role preference.     

Migration,marriage and social mobility: Women in Sweden 1880–1900

We study the intergenerational social mobility of women by looking at how migration was associated with socioeconomic marriage mobility using complete-count census data for Sweden. The censuses 1880–1900 have been linked at the individual level, enabling us to follow almost 100,000 women from their parental home to their new marital household. Marriage market imbalances were not an important push factor for migration but we find a strong association between migration distance and marriage outcomes, both in terms of overall marriage probabilities and in terms of partner selection by SES. These results highlight the importance of migration for women's intergenerational social mobility during industrialization.     

The Impact of Lending to Women on Household Vulnerability and Women’s Empowerment: Evidence from India

Impact evaluation studies routinely find that lending to women benefits their households. However, a number of them also find that this may not empower the women concerned. This seemingly paradoxical conclusion is confirmed by our study with respect to a lending program in rural India. We investigate this result by examining a combination of loan-use data and borrower-testimonies. We find that loans procured by women are often diverted into enhancing household’s assets and incomes. This combined with woman’s lack of co-ownership of family’s productive assets, we conclude, results in her disempowerment. If empowering women is a crucial objective, then the patriarchal hold on productive assets must be challenged.     

Marriage,Divorce, and Social Safety Net Policy

I study the effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and welfare reforms of the 1990s on flows into and out of marriage. I use test scores to predict who is most likely to be affected by the policy changes, and employ a flexible functional form to estimate heterogeneous effects. I find that lower-earning married women are more likely to divorce as the EITC expands, but I find no effect of EITC generosity on marriage. I find little effect of welfare generosity on marriage or divorce flows for any group. My results suggest that there are nonsymmetric responses to policy on flows into and out of marriages.     

Cottage industry,migration, and marriage in nineteenth‐century England

There has been considerable debate concerning the impact of the industrial employment of women upon their demographic behaviour in nineteenth‐century England. This article assesses the impact of employment in the cottage industry of straw plait and hat making in the county of Hertfordshire, comparing and contrasting districts where the industry was prominent with those where it was not. It is discovered that in 1851 the availability of straw industry employment encouraged earlier marriage, most notably in those parishes where the industry was particularly heavily concentrated, although overall levels of nuptiality and proportions ultimately marrying were similar in straw and non‐straw areas alike. By 1871, however, the skewed sex ratio that such employment produced among young adults served to offset this positive effect. As the industry waned in the later nineteenth century, the experience of different regions of the county converged, while throughout the period the data suggest that urban/rural contrasts and the suburbanization of London produced more stark contrasts in female marriage patterns than did the availability of cottage industry employment.     

Women's labor force participation and marriage: The case of Korea

In this paper, we examine the relationship between marital status and female labor force participation in Korea, and argue that marriage remains a major obstacle to young Korean women's employment. We find that an average married woman is much less likely (by 40–60%) to participate in the labor force than a single woman in urban Korea. Further investigation into the participation patterns among married women reveals that labor force participation rate (LFPR) varies with husband's occupation and her own age. Lower LFPR among the young married women is explained by demand-side factors, while relatively higher LFPR among the middle-aged married women is mostly explained by the supply-side factors.     

Bagehot for beginners: the making of lender‐of‐last‐resort operations in the mid‐nineteenth century1

In this article we develop new tools to survey the development of lending‐of‐last‐resort operations in the mid‐nineteenth century. One finding is that free lending and extensive liquidity support against good collateral developed gradually after 1847, and was already a fact of life before Bagehot published Lombard Street. Another is that the extension of the Bank of England's lender‐of‐last‐resort function went along with a reduction of its exposure to default risks, in contrast with accounts that have associated lending of last resort with moral hazard. Finally, we provide a new interpretation of the ‘high rates’ advocated by Bagehot. We suggest they were meant to prevent banks from free‐riding on the safety offered by the central bank, and were aimed at forcing them to keep lending during crises so as to maintain a critical degree of liquidity in the money market.     

Gender,ethnicity, and unequal opportunity in colonial Uganda: European influences,African realities,and the pitfalls of parish register data

The renaissance of African economic history in the past decade has opened up new research avenues for studying the long‐term social and economic development of Africa. A sensitive treatment of African realities in the evaluation of European colonial legacies and a critical stance towards the use of new sources and approaches is crucial. In this article, we engage with a recent article by Meier zu Selhausen and Weisdorf to show how selection biases in, and Eurocentric interpretations of, parish registers have provoked an overly optimistic account of European influences on the educational and occupational opportunities of African men and women. We confront their dataset, drawn from the marriage registers of the Anglican Cathedral in Kampala, with Uganda's 1991 census, and show that trends in the literacy and numeracy of men and women born in Kampala lagged half a century behind those who wedded in Namirembe Cathedral. We run a regression analysis showing that access to schooling during the colonial era was unequal along lines of gender and ethnicity. We foreground the role of Africans in the spread of education, and we argue that European influences were not just diffusive but also divisive, and that gender inequality was reconfigured rather than eliminated under colonial rule.     

The Global Financial Crisis and Sub‐Saharan Africa: The Effects of Slowing Private Capital Inflows on Growth*

Abstract: This paper uses the bias‐corrected least‐squares dummy variable (LSDV) estimator to examine the relationship between economic growth and four different types of private capital inflows (cross‐border bank lending, foreign direct investment (FDI), bonds flows and portfolio equity flows) on a sample of 15 selected sub‐Saharan African countries over the period 1980–2008. Our results show that FDI and cross‐border bank lending exert a significant and positive impact on sub‐Saharan Africa's growth, whereas portfolio equity flows and bonds flows have no growth impact. Our estimates suggest that a drop by 10 per cent in FDI inflows may lead to a 3 per cent decrease of income per capita growth in sub‐Saharan Africa, and a 10 per cent decrease in cross‐border bank lending may reduce growth by up to 1.5 per cent. Therefore, the global financial crisis is likely to have an important effect on sub‐Saharan Africa's growth through the private capital inflows channel.     

Education expansion,assortative marriage,and income inequality in China

In this paper, we study the pattern of assortative marriage in China since 1990 and its impact on income inequality. The results indicate that men in China are increasingly likely to marry women of similar education levels. We calculate the counterfactual income inequality that would prevail if marriages were randomly matched in terms of education. In 2005, China's overall Gini coefficient of household income per capita would decline from 0.512 to 0.476 if marriages were randomly matched. In urban areas, assortative marriage in education increased the Gini coefficients from 0.321 to 0.338 in 2009. The decomposition exercise shows that the rising returns to education contribute most to the increase in income inequality in urban areas between 1990 and 2009, while the change in marriage assortativeness plays a minor role.     

Diffusion of a social norm: tracing the emergence of the housewife in the Netherlands, 1812–19221

The emergence of the housewife in the Netherlands over the period 1812–1922 was strongly influenced by the social norm that women should withdraw from the labour market on the eve of marriage. Adherence to this norm is most clearly reflected in the emergence of the housewife among the lower classes, especially at the close of the nineteenth century among wives of farmers. Women in urban municipalities, however, set the norm far earlier and differences across social classes were significantly greater in towns than in rural areas. Paradoxically, the rise of the housewife did not change work pressures for lower‐class women.     

Land,ladies, and the law: a case study on women's land rights and welfare in Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century†

This study evaluates women's de jure and de facto land rights and their implications for household welfare in nineteenth‐century Bangkok. Women constituted a significant share of agricultural landowners holding government‐issued land deeds in central Siam (now Thailand)—a pattern that stands in contrast to both historical and contemporary developing economy contexts where the structure of land rights often favours men. The findings show, through both direct and indirect evidence, that women's de jure rights were upheld in practice. Women made significantly more agricultural investments than male or mixed‐gender owners, which supports the assertion that women perceived their land rights as secure under Siam's traditional usufruct land rights system. An assessment of land‐related court cases directly supports our claim, showing that women in Siam had access to legal representation and were protected when their land rights were challenged by investors and local elites in the context of high demand for both agricultural and urban land. Such secure land rights helped preserve women's livelihoods as agriculturists and household well‐being. We estimate that the median female‐owned orchard could support 10 adults annually, achieving a standard of living comparable to unskilled labourer households in Beijing and Milan during the same period.     

Where have all the brides gone? Son preference and marriage in India over the twentieth century

Marriage is universal for women in India, but the marriage rate for men varies across regions, where the region is a proxy for shared cultural norms. A preference for sons results in a biased sex ratio towards men and creates a shortage of brides in the marriage market. Using the Indian census of 1931, the article finds that son preference was a regional phenomenon and led to a low marriage rate for men. Using caste‐level information, the article finds no evidence that men from the upper castes enjoyed an advantage in the marriage market as the theoretical literature predicts. The regional differences in gender bias and marriage market outcomes have persisted over the twentieth century and indicate the persistence of cultural values. The long‐run changes show that the marriage squeeze has reduced the surplus of men in all regions; however, the regional differences in son preference and marriage outcomes were still the same in 2001.     

Children's marriage and parental subjective well-being: Evidence from China

The marriage of children is a milestone event in parenthood, while how parents' well-being evolves around the time children get married is limitedly understood. This paper examines the relationship between children's marriage and parents' subjective well-being. Using China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data, we find that parental subjective well-being is positively associated with children's marriage. An examination of the underlying mechanisms shows that, first, children's marriage can significantly enhance parents' sense of security in old-age care and their confidence in the future. Second, the older the unmarried children are, the more anxious the parents who hold stronger traditional ideology will be. Third, parents will increase their consumption expenditure after their children get married; and compared with daughters, sons' marriages have a stronger effect on parental well-being. These findings reveal that parental economic pressure due to China's biased sex ratio and marriage squeeze is relieved after their children's marriage.     

India’s Color Complex: One Day’s Worth of Matrimonials

Lighter skin complexions may function as a form of capital, particularly for women, in marriage markets. The existence of a preference for light skin for marital partners is an index of the presence of colorism or color bias in a given society. This paper reports on a detailed examination of marital advertisements that appeared in India’s Sunday Times on a single day in March 2013. It asks how often skin shade is mentioned in the advertisements placed among those seeking grooms and those seeking brides, how those mentions are distributed by the reported age of the prospective marital partner, and the type of language used to describe the individual’s complexion. The study finds that skin shade is described far more often in advertisements placed by prospective brides or their families than prospective grooms or their families, and, whenever complexion is mentioned, the possession of lighter skin shades.     

The Middle-Eastern marriage pattern? Malthusian dynamics in nineteenth-century Egypt

Malthus predicted that fertility rises with income and that people regulate fertility via regulating marriage. However, evidence on the Malthusian equilibrium has been mostly confined to Europe and East Asia. We employ Egypt's population censuses of 1848 and 1868 to provide the first evidence on the preindustrial Malthusian dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa. At the aggregate level, we document rural Egyptian women having a high fertility rate that is close to the Western European level, combined with low age at marriage and low celibacy rate, that are closer to the East Asian levels. This resulted in a uniquely high fertility regime that was probably offset by the high child mortality. Next, we provide individual-level evidence on the positive correlation between fertility and income (occupation). We find that the higher fertility of rural white-collar men is attributed to their marriage behaviour, and not to marital fertility. Specifically, white-collar men's higher polygyny explains 45 per cent of their fertility advantage, whereas their higher marriage rate and lower wife's age at marriage explains 55 per cent. Therefore, polygyny was an additional factor that led to a steeper income–fertility curve than in Western Europe by enabling the rural middle class to out-breed the poor.