Welfare Consequences of Early Marriage for Women in Developing Countries

发展中国家妇女早婚的福利后果

• 批准号: 0519260
• 负责人: Erica Field
• 金额: $ 13.96万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-09-15 至 2007-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0519260&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Welfare; Consequences; Early; Marriage; Women

Although early female marriage is extremely prevalent in many parts of the developing world, the nature and magnitude of the cost to women of marrying young remains an important and unanswered policy question. This project aims to provide empirical evidence on several dimensions of the potential socio-economic and physical consequences of early marriage for women using data from rural Bangladesh. In particular, the PI will explore the commonly cited hypotheses that girls attain less schooling, experience more reproductive health complications, have higher fertility and experience lower levels of gender equality in marriage as a result of marrying young. A novel identification strategy will allow the PI to estimate the causal effect of marriage timing on these outcomes by exploiting variation in the timing of menarche as an instrumental variable for age of first marriage. Because girls in Bangladesh are typically withheld from the marriage market until the onset of puberty, natural variation in the timing of first menstruation generates quasi-random differences in the earliest age at which girls are at risk of marriage.Intellectual Merit. This approach would contribute significantly to the existing literature on marriage institutions in developing countries by generating the first estimates of the causal effect of early marriage on adult outcomes. While statistics indicate that women in early marriages fare worse, it is difficult to assess the extent to which these outcomes are driven by the timing of marriage as opposed to common factors related to poverty and traditional gender views that also hinder female advancement. Hence, although many theoretical predictions related to marriage age and female welfare are ambiguous, competing hypotheses have not been adequately investigated with empirical tests. For instance, it is unclear whether parents would increase investment in girls' schooling if opportunities for marriage at young ages fall. Similarly, given even partial ability to limit childbearing with contraception, it is ambiguous whether fertility levels would fall significantly with a modest rise in age at marriage. Finally, while researchers have posited that marrying young directly reduces women's bargaining power in marriage, the theoretical predictions are again ambiguous. Broader Impact. The most important broader impact of estimating the causal influence of marriage timing would be to evaluate and direct policy measures aimed at eradicating child marriage practices, including determining how best to target such policies, and at what minimum age should these policies be enforced. On account of the strong correlations between age of marriage and female welfare, there is presently a great deal of policy focus on instituting effective laws banning adolescent marriage, although the difficulty in enforcing such laws suggests that upholding them would be costly. Meanwhile, the direct effect of early marriage on adult outcomes and hence the expected benefits of enforcing consent laws is not well understood. Only where early marriage is causally related to female outcomes in adulthood is a strong policy focus justified. Furthermore, it is impossible for policy makers to assess which subpopulations lie in the margin of influence for changing marriage practices. Results of the proposed research would shed light on several features of marriage markets in Bangladesh relevant for optimally targeting policy efforts towards ages, family structures and socio-economic groups. Perhaps most importantly, it is likely that most of the benefitsto marriage delay come from postponing marriages below the current age of consent laws. Hence,legal bans on marriage below 15 or 16 may be comparable in effectiveness and more feasible policy measures in settings in which adolescent marriage is costly to prevent. Similarly, uncovering therelative burden of particular consequences of marrying young is critical for determining whichcomplimentary policy measures are needed most in settings in which the practice continues. Throughcollaborative efforts with ICDDR,B Centre for Health & Population Research, research findings willbe disseminated directly to local program officials in order to better direct future policy formulation.

虽然女性早婚在发展中世界的许多地方极为普遍，但妇女早婚的性质和代价仍然是一个重要的、没有答案的政策问题。本项目旨在利用孟加拉国农村地区的数据，就早婚对妇女潜在的社会经济和身体后果的几个方面提供经验证据。特别值得一提的是，PI将探讨一些普遍被引用的假设，即女孩受教育较少、出现生殖健康并发症较多、生育率较高以及由于早婚导致婚姻中的性别平等程度较低。一种新的识别策略将允许PI通过利用月经初潮时间的变化作为第一次婚姻年龄的工具变量来估计婚姻时间对这些结果的因果影响。由于孟加拉国的女孩在进入青春期之前通常不会进入婚姻市场，因此第一次月经时间的自然变化会导致女孩面临结婚风险的最早年龄出现近乎随机的差异。知识价值。这种方法将对现有的关于发展中国家婚姻制度的文献作出重大贡献，因为它对早婚对成年结果的因果影响作出了首次估计。虽然统计数据表明，早婚妇女的情况更糟，但很难评估这些结果在多大程度上是由结婚时间造成的，而不是与贫穷和传统性别观念有关的共同因素造成的，这些因素也阻碍了女性的进步。因此，尽管许多与结婚年龄和女性福利相关的理论预测是模糊的，但竞争性假设尚未得到充分的实证检验。例如，如果年轻时结婚的机会减少，尚不清楚父母是否会增加对女孩上学的投资。同样，考虑到通过避孕来限制生育的部分能力，生育率是否会随着结婚年龄的适度提高而显著下降，这是不明确的。最后，虽然研究人员假设早婚直接降低了女性在婚姻中的议价能力，但理论预测仍然模棱两可。更广泛的影响。估计结婚时间的因果影响的最重要的更广泛的影响将是评价和指导旨在消除童婚做法的政策措施，包括确定如何最好地确定此类政策的目标，以及执行这些政策的最低年龄是多少。鉴于结婚年龄与女性福利之间的强烈相关性，目前有大量的政策侧重于制定有效的法律禁止青少年结婚，尽管在执行这些法律方面的困难表明维护这些法律将是昂贵的。与此同时，早婚对成人的直接影响，以及执行同意法的预期好处，还没有得到很好的理解。只有在早婚与女性成年后的结果有因果关系的情况下，强有力的政策重点才有理由。此外，决策者不可能评估哪些亚群处于改变婚姻习俗的影响边缘。拟议的研究结果将阐明孟加拉国婚姻市场的若干特点，这些特点与将政策努力最佳地针对年龄、家庭结构和社会经济群体有关。也许最重要的是，推迟结婚的大部分好处可能来自于将婚姻推迟到当前法定同意年龄以下。因此，法律禁止15岁或16岁以下的人结婚，在预防青少年结婚费用高昂的情况下，可能具有相当的效力和更可行的政策措施。同样，揭示早婚的特定后果的相对负担对于确定在这种做法继续存在的情况下最需要哪种补充政策措施至关重要。通过与B保健和人口研究中心的合作努力，研究结果将直接传播给地方方案官员，以便更好地指导未来的政策制定。