Early Marriage, Age of Menarche, and Female Schooling Attainment in Bangladesh

By Erica M. Field, Attila Ambrus. Journal of Political Economy, 2008

610 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using data from rural Bangladesh, we explore the hypothesis that women attain less schooling as a result of social and financial pressure to marry young. We isolate the causal effect of marriage timing using age of menarche as an instrumental variable. Our results indicate that each additional year that marriage is delayed is associated with 0.22 additional year of schooling and 5.6 percent higher literacy. Delayed marriage is also associated with an increase in use of preventive health services. In the context of competitive marriage markets, we use the above results to obtain estimates of the change in equilibrium female education that would arise from introducing age of consent laws.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/252a8be9ab3f43f558d2a7c706a83a2b3f3fb5e6

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Citations in the corpus

Age of Marriage, Weather Shocks, and the Direction of Marriage Payments (2020, background): “Marriage markets are an important determinant of human capital investments, risk-sharing opportunities and fertility outcomes (Tertilt, 2005; Field and Ambrus, 2008; Chiappori, Dias, and Meghir, 2018).”
Women's Inheritance Rights and Intergenerational Transmission of Resources in India (2013, neutral): “Recent studies (Jensen and Thornton 2003; Field and Ambrus 2008) suggest that large improvements in women’s wellbeing may be achievable even with small increases in female age at marriage suggesting that the relatively modest magnitude of the impact (of half a year on average) could potentially be a”
Women Empowerment and Economic Development (2012, background): “How one values this convenience, versus educating children or better roads, is not something that economists are well placed to evaluate.”
The Roots of Gender Inequality in Developing Countries (2015, background): “Field & Ambrus (2008) estimate that, in Bangladesh, for every year an adolescent girl ’ s marriage is delayed, she completes an additional 0.22 years of schooling.”
Cash or Condition? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Experiment (2011, background): “Offers to everyone, identical to the previous one they received and regardless of their schooling status during the first year of the program in 2008, were renewed between December 2008 and January 2009 for the second and final year of the intervention, which ended at the end of 2009.”
When the money runs out: Do cash transfers have sustained effects on human capital accumulation? (2016, neutral): “Environments in which adolescent marriage is common may feature a preference for young brides (Foster and Khan 2000), meaning that delaying marriage may worsen marriage prospects, resulting in either lower husband quality (or bride price) or higher dowry payments (Field and Ambrus 2008).”
Manufacturing Growth and the Lives of Bangladeshi Women (2015, positive): “We use this analysis to explore whether access to factory jobs prompt Bangladeshi women to delay marriage and childbearing, which are important indicators of welfare for females in developing countries (Field and Ambrus, 2008).”
Entrepreneurship responding to adversity: Equilibrating Adverse Events and Disequilibrating Persistent Adversity (2020, background): “…countries similar to Bangladesh that have a patriarchal society in which violence against women is normalized, girls are married at an early age to older men and forced into having sex, and women remain subordinate to males throughout society (Field & Ambrus, 2008; Schuler, Hashemi, & Badal, 1998).”
Motherhood and Female Labor Supply in the Developing World: Evidence from Infertility Shocks (2011, background): “However, Field and Ambrus (2008) review more than 60 biomedical studies and conclude that the onset of menarche is not associated with socioeconomic status indicators, including malnutrition.”
Economic Impacts of Child Marriage: A Review of the Literature (2015, positive): “Field and Ambrus (2008) and Nguyen and Wodon (2015a) suggest that each year of early marriage below the age of 18 can lead to a decrease of 4 to 6 percentage points in the probability of secondary school completion for girls, with, in some cases, an impact of the number of years of early marriage…”
Education for All 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges (2015, background): “In one of few exceptions that addresses the endogeneity of marriage and schooling decisions, Field and Ambrus (2008) estimated that postponing marriage by one year for girls aged 11 to 16 in Bangladesh would increase their schooling by an estimated 0.22 years and adult literacy by 5.6 percent.”