The Causal Effect of Early Marriage on Women's Bargaining Power
No hay miniatura disponible
Fecha
Autores
Título de la revista
ISSN de la revista
Título del volumen
Editor
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
Resumen
Descripción
Early marriage restrains women’s
agency and bargaining strength in post marital households,
impairing their ability to make meaningful contributions to
household decision making. This paper employs a
comprehensive measure of women’s empowerment in the domestic
and productive spheres, and isolates the causal effect of
age at marriage, instrumented by age at menarche, on their
bargaining strength, using nationally representative data
from Bangladesh. Results suggest that delayed marriages
result in significantly higher empowerment scores and
probability of being empowered for women, because of higher
likelihood in achieving adequacy in their autonomy in
agricultural production, control over income, ownership of
assets and rights in those assets, and ability to speak in
public. Favorable impacts of delayed marriage are also found
on women’s freedom of mobility, fertility choices, and their
ability to decide on household expenses and investments,
with the impacts likely coming via improvements in education
and labor market outcomes when women married later.
Palabras clave
EARLY MARRIAGE, BARGAINING POWER, WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT, BANGLADESH, GENDER EQUALITY, SDG 5