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

85 Pages Posted: 10 Oct 2019

See all articles by Lucia Corno

Lucia Corno

Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan - Institute of Economy and Finance

Nicole Hildebrandt

Boston Consulting Group

Alessandra Voena

University of Chicago

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: March 26, 2019

Abstract

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 culture.

Keywords: marriage market, income shocks, informal insurance, Africa, India, dowry, bride price, external validity

JEL Classification: J1, O15

Suggested Citation

Corno, Lucia and Hildebrandt, Nicole and Voena, Alessandra, Age of Marriage, Weather Shocks, and the Direction of Marriage Payments (March 26, 2019). University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper No. 2019-123, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3466455 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3466455

Lucia Corno

Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan - Institute of Economy and Finance ( email )

Via Necchi 5
20123 Milano
Italy

Nicole Hildebrandt

Boston Consulting Group ( email )

J.F. Kennedylaan 100
3741 EH Baarn
United States

Alessandra Voena (Contact Author)

University of Chicago ( email )

1101 East 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
United States

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