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.

尽管女性早婚在发展中国家的许多地区极为普遍，但女性早婚成本的性质和程度仍然是一个重要且尚未得到解答的政策问题。该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。特别是，PI 将探讨常见的假设，即由于早婚，女孩受教育程度较低、经历更多生殖健康并发症、生育率较高以及婚姻中性别平等水平较低。一种新颖的识别策略将允许 PI 通过利用初潮时间的变化作为初婚年龄的工具变量来估计结婚时间对这些结果的因果影响。 由于孟加拉国的女孩通常在青春期开始之前才进入婚姻市场，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产生准随机差异。智力优点。通过对早婚对成年结果的因果影响进行初步估计，这种方法将对发展中国家婚姻制度的现有文献做出重大贡献。虽然统计数据表明早婚妇女的境况较差，但很难评估这些结果在多大程度上是由结婚时间决定的，而不是与贫困和阻碍女性进步的传统性别观点相关的常见因素。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棱两可的，但相互竞争的假设尚未通过实证检验得到充分的研究。例如，如果年轻时结婚的机会减少，目前尚不清楚父母是否会增加对女童教育的投资。同样，即使有部分能力通过避孕来限制生育，随着结婚年龄的适度提高，生育水平是否会显着下降也是不明确的。最后，虽然研究人员认为早婚会直接降低女性在婚姻中的讨价还价能力，但理论预测再次模棱两可。更广泛的影响。估计结婚时机的因果影响最重要的更广泛影响将是评估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针对此类政策，以及应在什么最低年龄执行这些政策。由于结婚年龄与女性福利之间的密切相关性，目前的政策重点是制定禁止青少年婚姻的有效法律，尽管执行这些法律的难度表明维持这些法律的成本高昂。与此同时，早婚对成年结果的直接影响以及执行同意法的预期好处尚不清楚。只有当早婚与女性成年后的结果存在因果关系时，强有力的政策重点才是合理的。此外，政策制定者不可能评估哪些亚人群处于改变婚姻习俗的影响范围内。拟议研究的结果将揭示孟加拉国婚姻市场的几个特征，这些特征与优化针对年龄、家庭结构和社会经济群体的政策努力相关。也许最重要的是，延迟结婚的大部分好处很可能来自于将婚姻推迟到低于现行法定同意年龄的年龄。因此，在预防青少年婚姻成本高昂的情况下，禁止 15 岁或 16 岁以下结婚的法律禁令可能在有效性上具有可比性，并且是更可行的政策措施。同样，揭示早婚特定后果的相对负担对于确定在这种做法持续存在的环境中最需要哪些补充性政策措施至关重要。通过与 ICDDR、B 健康与人口研究中心的合作，研究结果将直接传播给当地项目官员，以便更好地指导未来的政策制定。