Age of Marriage, Weather Shocks, and the Direction of Marriage Payments

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Corno, Lucia; Hildebrandt, Nicole; Voena, Alessandra
• 署名单位: Catholic University of the Sacred Heart; Boston Consulting Group (BCG); National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Chicago; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR)
• 刊物名称: ECONOMETRICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0012-9682
• DOI: 10.3982/ECTA15505
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 879-915
• 关键词: INCOME COUNTRIES; civil conflict; DOWRY PAYMENTS; consumption; ECONOMICS; culture; MARKET; fertility; education; drought

摘要

We study how aggregate economic conditions affect the timing of marriage, and particularly child marriage, in Sub-Saharan Africa and in India. In both regions, substantial monetary or in-kind transfers occur with marriage: bride price across Sub-Saharan Africa and dowry in India. In a simple equilibrium model of the marriage market in which parents choose when their children marry, income shocks affect the age of marriage because marriage payments are a source of consumption smoothing, particularly for a woman's family. As predicted by our model, we show that droughts, which reduce annual crop yields by 10 to 15% and aggregate income by 4 to 5%, have opposite effects on the marriage behavior of a sample of 400,000 women in the two regions: in Sub-Saharan Africa they increase the annual hazard into child marriage by 3%, while in India droughts reduce such a hazard by 4%. Changes in the age of marriage due to droughts are associated with changes in fertility, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, and with declines in observed marriage payments. Our results indicate that the age of marriage responds to short-term changes in aggregate economic conditions and that marriage payments determine the sign of this response. This suggests that, in order to design successful policies to combat child marriage and improve investments in daughters' human capital, it is crucial to understand the economic role of marriage market institutions.