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Happily Ever After? Mental Health Effects of Early Marriage in Indonesia
Abstract
Early marriage is a manifestation of gender discrimination against girls, leading to adverse consequences on their well-being. This article contributes to the literature by examining the effects of early marriage on the mental well-being of women – an area often overlooked in research. Using nationally representative longitudinal data from Indonesia and applying difference-in-differences regression model with fixed-effects, this study finds that marrying early, particularly by the age of 18 years, has a strong negative impact on women’s mental health. Specifically, women who marry early are 9.6 percentage points more likely to be depressed. It further finds that a one-year delay in marriage decreases the likelihood of women having depression by approximately four percent of the mean. These findings add to the evidence of adverse health effects of early marriage and provide a rationale for policy interventions implemented toward eradicating it.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Marrying early, particularly by age 18, has adverse effects on women’s mental health.
• In Indonesia, women who married early are more likely to be depressed than women who married later.
• Restricted labor market mobility and poor physical health are potential mechanisms.
• Policy interventions must move toward eradicating early marriage.
... Pernikahan dini merupakan bentuk diskriminasi gender terhadap perempuan, yang dapat menimbulkan dampak negatif terhadap kesejahteraan dan kesehatan mental perempuan. Penelitian menunjukkan bahwa perempuan yang menikah di usia dini memiliki kemungkinan 9,6% lebih besar untuk mengalami depresi (Jayawardana, 2022). ...
Pengabdian masyarakat ini bertujuan untuk memberdayakan siswa-siswi SMA Negeri 2 Kabupaten Pangkajene dan Kepulauan dalam merencanakan masa depan mereka serta menghindari pernikahan dini, melalui pendekatan Personal Value Canvas (PVC). PVC adalah sebuah modifikasi dari Value Proposition Canvas yang membantu siswa mengenali potensi, kelemahan, dan cita-cita mereka. Kegiatan ini dilaksanakan dengan model lokakarya yang melibatkan permainan interaktif dan presentasi, yang memungkinkan siswa untuk mengisi PVC mereka secara mandiri. Hasil kegiatan menunjukkan bahwa siswa menjadi lebih sadar akan potensi dan kelemahan diri mereka, serta mampu membuat rencana yang lebih baik untuk masa depan. Beberapa siswa menyadari bahwa cita-cita mereka tidak sejalan dengan jurusan yang mereka pilih, namun mereka berkomitmen untuk memperbaiki diri demi mencapai tujuan tersebut. Selain itu, program ini juga menyosialisasikan berbagai bantuan pendidikan dari pemerintah daerah, yang semakin menambah motivasi siswa untuk melanjutkan pendidikan tinggi. Kesimpulannya, pendekatan PVC membantu siswa merencanakan masa depan dengan lebih baik dan menumbuhkan komitmen yang kuat untuk mencapai impian mereka.
... For instance, research in Sudan indicates that 45.9% of women experience early marriage, with a notable decrease among women aged 20 to 24. Factors such as education level, media exposure, family size, and geographic location are intricately linked to the occurrence of early marriage (Jayawardana, 2022). ...
This study examines the complex relationship between early marriage and its effects on the mental health of young married women in Pakistan. Defining early marriage as a union in which at least one of the parties is under the age of 18, this research sheds light on the multifaceted consequences of such marriages, particularly for women's mental health and subsequent child development. Using qualitative research methods, in-depth interviews with a carefully selected sample of women served as the basis for this study. People in this category are those who were married between the ages of 16 and 17 and are currently older than 30. By examining the social, physical, emotional, and economic ramifications of early marriage throughout the course of their lives, this demographic sample offers a longitudinal view on its consequences. A great deal of attention is paid to women who were married in the 1990s, and the difficulties they faced are examined in light of various sociodemographic characteristics. Wealth index, occupation, education level, resource management in the home, freedom to make health-related decisions, geography, media exposure, and health insurance coverage are some of these variables. According to the study, these variables are linked to early marriage's prevalence and the long-term consequences it has on women's social, emotional, and physical health. The study also emphasizes the part postponed marriage and sociodemographic traits plays in reducing the prevalence of early marriage like greater education levels and better employment possibilities are crucial in lowering the incidence of early marriage.
... The poor efficacy of interventions mean that achievement of the 5 th Sustainable Development Goal, ending child marriage by 2030, is highly unlikely (UN General Assembly, 2015;UNICEF, 2022). Paradoxically, the prevention of early marriage has received little consideration in feminist economics studies, though it is attracting more attention in public health research (Jayawardana, 2022;John, 2021;Roychowdhury & Dhamija, 2021;Wodon, Nguyen & Tsimpo, 2016). ...
Background
Women’s underage marriage (<18 years) is associated with adverse maternal and child health outcomes. Poverty in the natal household has been widely considered to be a key risk factor for underage marriage, but the evidence base is unreliable. When investigating this issue, most studies use marital wealth inappropriately, as a proxy for wealth in the natal household. In contrast, we investigated whether the timing of women’s marriage was associated with the wealth of the households they marry into, and how this may vary by women’s education level. This approach allows us to explore a different set of research questions which help to understand the economic value placed on the timing of women’s marriage.
Methods
We used data on 3,102 women aged 12–34 years, surveyed within 1 year of marriage, from the cluster-randomized Low Birth Weight South Asia Trial in lowland rural Nepal. Linear mixed-effects regression models investigated independent associations of women’s marriage age and education level with marital household wealth, and their interactive effects. Models adjusted for marital household traits. We analysed the full sample, and then only the uneducated women, who comprised a substantial proportion in our sample.
Results
In the full sample, we found that each later year of women’s marriage was associated with 1.5% lower asset score for those with primary education, and with 0.3% and 1.3% higher asset score for those with lower secondary or secondary/higher education, respectively. For uneducated women, relative to marrying ≤14 years, marrying at 15, 16, 17 and ≥18 years was associated with 1.5%, 4.4%, 2.4% and 6.2% greater marital asset score respectively.
Conclusion
On average, marrying ≥18 years was associated with greater marital assets for secondary-educated women. There were only very modest benefits in terms of marital household wealth for delaying marriage beyond 16 years for uneducated women or those with low education. These findings elucidate potential trade-offs faced by families, including decisions over how much education, if any, to provide to daughters. They may help to understand the economic rationale underpinning the timing of marriage, and why early marriage remains common despite efforts to delay it.
... The findings indicate that a deficiency in education has a notable influence on the extent to which gender discrimination is experienced and the level of marital satisfaction. The findings presented in Jayawardana (2022). study provide further evidence that gender discrimination is prevalent in contexts characterised by limited educational opportunities, resulting in marital dissatisfaction due to inequality. ...
The issue of marital dissatisfaction has emerged as a significant concern in light of economic instability and educational deficiencies, necessitating the attention of contemporary scholarly works and policymakers. Therefore, the current study aims to examine the effects of dowry-related pressures, male ego, and gender discrimination on the overall satisfaction levels in marital relationships among Kurdish individuals. This study also examines the moderating influence of educational attainment on the relationship between pressure to provide dowry, male ego, gender discrimination, and marital dissatisfaction among Kurdish individuals. The primary data for this study was collected from a specific group of individuals through the use of survey questionnaires. The study additionally utilised the SPSS-AMOS software to assess the validity of the data and examine the relationships between the variables under investigation. The results of the study revealed that there is a significant correlation between the practice of dowry, male ego, and gender discrimination and the level of marital dissatisfaction experienced by Kurdish individuals. The findings also revealed that the level of education plays a significant moderating role in the relationship between the pressure to provide dowry, male ego, gender discrimination, and marital dissatisfaction among Kurdish individuals. This article provides guidance to policymakers in formulating policies pertaining to the dissatisfaction experienced within marital relationships, with a focus on addressing issues such as the practice of dowry, male ego, limited access to education, and gender-based discrimination.
... As noted in the novel, retrogressive cultural practices deprive women of education and other life opportunities. This is in line with Jayawardana's (2022) observation that once a girl gets married at an early age, getting education or going back to school would be next to impossible for her because of the subsequent preoccupation with household chores, stigma, child bearing and nurturing and other prejudices that accompany early marriages. Neculaesei (2015) similarly states that early marriages violate a person's human rights and freedom of choice and have no regard to the will of the individual. ...
Retrogressive socio-cultural practices are rooted in cultures and traditions and they directly or indirectly violate human rights. One function of literature is to highlight such practices and invite the society to reflect and change for the better. Henry Ole Kulet’s Blossoms of the Savannah is a Kenyan novel approved for study in secondary schools in Kenya and was the basis through which this paper was done. The study adopted a comparative research design. The novel was selected purposively to examine how it interrogates retrogressive socio-cultural practices in the Maasai culture. Data was collected using a close reading of the text and was subjected to content analysis. The study found that four major retrogressive socio-cultural practices are highlighted in the novel, namely female genital mutilation, polygamy, patriarchy along with male chauvinism and early or planned marriages. These practices deprive women of their dignity and right to make decisions as individuals. They work by exerting control over women’s bodies and limiting their decision-making options within the social spaces. Some women have resigned to the status quo, having been socialized and oppressed for a long time. However, others, due to their young age and exposure to western formal education, assert strive to break free from these retrogressive practices. Ole Kulet envisions the possibility of women breaking free from these practices and finding a chance to improve their lives through education. There is need to sensitize women, men, children and communities on the detrimental effects of retrogressive cultural practices, especially FGM, and on the value of girl-child education.
... One study in Nusa Bakti village, Belitang iii sub-district, south sumatra, indonesia, found that early marriage has a significant impact on children's psychology since at a very young age they still need guidance from their parents (ikhsanudin & Nurjanah, 2018). thus, women marrying early tend to be more depressed, indicating the negative health effects of early marriage (Jayawardana, 2022). Furthermore, cameron et al. (2022) examined the life cycles of males and females marrying early in indonesia. ...
As a country with the fourth largest population in the world, the high number of child marriages remains a major concern in Indonesia. The country is positioned in the top 10 highest child marriage rates in the world and the second highest in southeast Asia. The high rate of early marriage in Indonesia aligns with the low educational achievement among children. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the effect of early marriage on children's educational achievement as measured by their cognitive abilities. Using the fifth round of the Indonesia Family life survey dataset in 2014, this study employs ordinary least squares with clustered standard errors at the household level in multiple regression analysis. The dependent variable is child cognition as measured by the percentage of correct answers achieved by a sample of 4542 children aged 7 to 14 years on the Raven test, while the main independent variables are the parents' age of marriage. The result suggests that the age of marriage of mothers had a positive and significant effect on their children's educational achievement. This finding implies that children born to mothers who married earlier tend to have lower cognitive abilities. However, this result is statistically detectable for daughters only.
... Yount et al. (2016) looks at the effect of early marriage on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in Bangladesh using panel data from 2013 and 2014. They find that marrying before the age of 18 is a risk factor for IPV, with the risk of IPV being even stronger for those who were married before the age of 15. Jayawardana (2019) looks at the effect of child marriage on mental health for women in Indonesia using differences-indifferences and matching techniques. She finds that marrying early, particularly by the age of 18 years, has a strong negative effect on women's mental health. ...
An understanding of the experiences of men and women who marry before adulthood is important in motivating social change. Using fixed effects estimation (the inclusion of geographic fixed effects at diminishing levels of aggregation and sister fixed effects where possible) on panel data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS), we follow the lives of a sample of 40,800 women and men for up to two decades and examine a wide range of factors associated with child marriage. We examine the lives of both girls and boys who marry early, and the differential experience of girls marrying older men versus young boys. Child marriage is found to be associated with lesser educational attainment, lower earnings and less say in household decision-making, for both men and women. Women are less likely to have a medically-supervised birth and their children are more likely to die, be stunted and perform worse on cognitive tests. Negative factors are mostly exacerbated when young girls marry similarly underage men.
This study assesses the causal effect of child marriage on infant mortality. Using age discontinuities in exposure to a law that raised the legal age of marriage for women in Ethiopia, the study estimates that a 1-year delay in a woman’s age at cohabitation during her teenage years reduces the probability of her first-born child dying during infancy by 3.8 percentage points. This impact is closely linked to the effect of delaying cohabitation on women’s age at first birth.
Using a rich longitudinal data set of married couples from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study, this article seeks to uncover the intramarital allocation of experienced utility and its drivers. We find both substantial gains from marriage and effects of relative predicted earnings outside of marriage on relative gains from marriage. These findings are consistent with cooperative bargaining models and with models viewing individuals as having a demand for household production services by a spouse, with market forces influencing the price of such services. In addition, we find that men benefit more from marriage than women and that this gender gap is more pronounced for older couples. This is likely to be due to social norms and prescribed gender roles which are more prevalent within the older generation.
In this article the objective is to provide useful information for dialogue with faith and community leaders by documenting what is known about the economic impacts of child marriage on the girls who marry early their children and their families. The hope is that such information can help sensitize faith and community leaders about the consequences of the practice and the need to eliminate it. The article is structured in five sections. Each section documents the economic impact of child marriage in a specific area: participation and decision-making educational attainment labor force participation violence and health.
Using detailed longitudinal data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) from 1998 to 2008, this paper finds significant gender differences in impacts as well as adaptation patterns to major life and labor market events in Korea. Men remain on a higher happiness level throughout marriage, while women return to their baseline happiness within only two years. Consequently, men suffer more from divorce and the death of a spouse. This marital gender happiness gap is equivalent to a (husband only) increase of annual per capita household income of approximately US$17,800. The study further finds that men suffer more from unemployment. Results are robust to the inclusion of multiple simultaneous events and the use of different estimators.
We address a major discrepancy in matching methods for causal inference in observational data. Since these data are typically plentiful, the goal of matching is to reduce bias and only secondar-ily to keep variance low. However, most matching methods seem designed for the opposite goal, guaranteeing sample size ex ante but limiting bias by controlling for covariates through reductions in the imbalance between treated and control groups only ex post and only sometimes. (The re-sulting practical difficulty may explain why so many published applications do not check whether imbalance was reduced and so may not even be decreasing bias.) We introduce "Coarsened Exact Matching" (CEM) which, unlike most existing approaches, bounds through ex ante user choice the degree of maximal imbalance, model dependence, and causal effect estimation error; eliminates the need for a separate procedure to restrict data to common support; meets the congruence prin-ciple; is approximately invariant to measurement error; works well with multicategory treatment variables and with modern methods of imputation for missing data; is computationally efficient even with massive data sets; and is easy to understand and use. CEM can improve causal infer-ences in a wide range of applications, and may be preferred for simplicity of use even when it is possible to design superior methods for particular problems. We also make available open source software for R and Stata which implements all our suggestions.
Relative to developed countries and some parts of the developing world, most notably sub-Saharan Africa, there are far fewer
women than men in India and China. It has been argued that as many as a 100 million women could be missing. The possibility
of gender bias at birth and the mistreatment of young girls are widely regarded as key explanations. We provide a decomposition
of these missing women by age and cause of death. While we do not dispute the existence of severe gender bias at young ages,
our computations yield some striking new findings: (1) the vast majority of missing women in India and a significant proportion
of those in China are of adult age; (2) as a proportion of the total female population, the number of missing women is largest
in sub-Saharan Africa, and the absolute numbers are comparable to those for India and China; (3) almost all the missing women
stem from disease-by-disease comparisons and not from the changing composition of disease, as described by the epidemiological
transition. Finally, using historical data, we argue that a comparable proportion of women was missing at the start of the
20th century in the United States, just as they are in India, China, and sub-Saharan Africa today.
To examine the association between maternal age at first birth and infant mortality, stunting, underweight, wasting, diarrhoea and anaemia in children in low- and middle-income countries.
Cross-sectional analysis of nationally representative household samples. A modified Poisson regression model is used to estimate unadjusted and adjusted RR ratios.
Low- and middle-income countries.
First births to women aged 12-35 where this birth occurred 12-60 months prior to interview. The sample for analysing infant mortality is comprised of 176,583 children in 55 low- and middle-income countries across 118 Demographic and Health Surveys conducted between 1990 and 2008.
Infant mortality in children under 12 months and stunting, underweight, wasting, diarrhoea and anaemia in children under 5 years.
The investigation reveals two salient findings. First, in the sample of women who had their first birth between the ages of 12 and 35, the risk of poor child health outcome is lowest for women who have their first birth between the ages of 27 and 29. Second, the results indicate that both biological and social mechanisms play a role in explaining why children of young mothers have poorer outcomes.
The first-born children of adolescent mothers are the most vulnerable to infant mortality and poor child health outcomes. Additionally, first time mothers up to the age of 27 have a higher risk of having a child who has stunting, diarrhoea and moderate or severe anaemia. Maternal and child health programs should take account of this increased risk even for mothers in their early 20s. Increasing the age at first birth in developing countries may have large benefits in terms of child health.
No Indonesian studies have addressed the relationship between chronic illness and depression. Using simultaneous equation modeling, this study modeled the joint dependency of depression and chronic illness. The findings showed that the odds of having at least two chronic health conditions increase with the level of depression and individuals with at least two chronic health conditions have higher odds of being in a higher depression category. The health benefits of education are greater among Indonesian women after controlling for mobility, age, marital status, and smoking. Policies directed toward reducing gender differences in education are crucial to reduce persistent health inequalities.
This paper shows that increases in the minimum wage rate can have ambiguous effects on the working hours and welfare of employed workers in competitive labor markets. The reason is that employers may not comply with the minimum wage legislation and instead pay a lower subminimum wage rate. If workers are risk neutral, we prove that working hours and welfare are invariant to the minimum wage rate. If workers are risk averse and imprudent (which is the empirically likely case), then working hours decrease with the minimum wage rate, while their welfare may increase.
In most developing countries, the majority of sexually active female adolescents are married. Although married adolescents are often assumed to be at low risk for HIV infection, little is known about the actual HIV risks these adolescents face or about ways to minimize these risks.
Demographic and Health Survey data from 29 countries in Africa and Latin America were used to examine the frequency of factors that may increase HIV risk in married women aged 15-19.
Several behavioral and social factors may increase the vulnerability of married female adolescents to HIV infection. First, these young women engage in frequent unprotected sex: In most countries, more than 80% of adolescents who had had unprotected sex during the previous week were married. Second, women who marry young tend to have much older husbands (mean age difference, 5-14 years) and, in polygamous societies, are frequently junior wives, factors that may increase the probability that their husbands are infected and weaken their bargaining power within the marriage. Third, married adolescents have relatively little access to educational and media sources of information about HIV. Finally, the most common AIDS prevention strategies (abstinence, condom use) are not realistic options for many married adolescents.
New policies and interventions, tailored to the sexual and behavioral profiles of women in each country, are needed to address the vulnerabilities of adolescent wives. In some countries, delaying age at marriage may be an important strategy; in others, making intercourse within marriage safer may be more valuable.
This study examines the causal effect of women’s age at marriage on prevalence of domestic violence using newly available household data from India. The paper employs an empirical strategy that utilizes variation in age at menarche to obtain exogenous variation in women’s age at marriage. The results show robust evidence that a one-year delay in women’s marriage causes a significant decline in physical violence, although it has no impact on sexual or emotional violence. Further, the study provides suggestive evidence that the effect of women’s marital age on physical violence arises because older brides, as compared to younger brides, are more educated and are married to more educated men. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of better enforcement of existing social policies that seek to delay marriages of women, as well as formulation of newer interventions, to reduce the prevalence of domestic violence in developing countries.
HIGHLIGHTS
• The study examines the causal effect of marital age on exposure to domestic violence.
• It utilizes recent household data from India.
• Variation in age at menarche is used to obtain exogenous variation in age at marriage.
• Results show one-year delay in women's marriage causes a decline in physical violence.
• The study conducts further analysis to shed light on underlying mechanisms.
Over the past thirty years, feminist economists have been at the forefront of work on household and intrahousehold economics. To a significant degree, their work has entered mainstream economics. This is surely a success story, both in the impact on academia and the broader implications for policy. This essay suggests that feminist economists should pause to reflect on the potential perils that accompany these successes. What gets lost when intrahousehold issues are folded into mainstream economic analyses? What is still missing in this literature? What still needs to be on the agenda for feminist economists working on issues around households? The essay highlights five potential perils: the focus on individuals, the narrow definition of households, the tendency for questions to be driven by available data and metrics, the possibility of collecting more data than scholars can use, and the need to include social norms and structural constraints.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Feminist economists have advanced the frontiers of household economics.
• Innovations in data collection help us understand women’s asset ownership and decision making.
• Women’s voices are increasingly captured in data collection.
• Mainstream approaches continue to focus on individuals and to define households narrowly.
• Much mainstream research still struggles to include social norms and structural constraints.
This study examines whether Ugandan women who marry at younger ages fare differently on a wide range of later-life outcomes than women who marry at later ages. Using a nationally representative data set, I identify the plausibly causal impacts of women’s marriage age by using age at menarche as an instrumental variable. Results indicate that a one-year delay in marriage for Ugandan women leads to higher educational attainment (0.5–0.75 years), literacy (10 percentage points), and labor force participation (8 percentage points). I also explore intergenerational effects of later marriage and find that the children of mothers who marry later have higher BMI (0.11 kg/m²) and hemoglobin levels (0.18 g/dl), and they are also less likely to be anemic (4 percentage points). Finally, I present evidence suggesting that the observed effects might be mediated through an enhancement of women’s agency within their household and positive assortative matching in the marriage market. By pointing to the beneficial consequences of delaying marriage, this research calls for concerted policy action to prevent child marriage.
We investigate whether female early marriage is a conduit for the transmission of social norms, specifically norms relating to gender roles and rights within the household. We exploit differences in age at menarche between sisters as an exogenous source of variation in marriage age. This approach allows us to control for beliefs and attitudes that are transmitted from parents to children. Using a sample of unmarried adolescents, we first show that the timing of menarche has no direct effect on adolescent attitudes towards gender norms. Yet we find that early marriage increases agreement with statements supportive of traditional gender roles and gender bias in the allocation of resources. We also find some evidence that early marriage worsens the (self‐reported) quality of a woman's post‐marital social network.
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 calls on nations to promote gender equality and to empower women and girls. SDG5 also recognizes the value of women's economic empowerment, entailing equal rights to economic resources and full participation at all levels in economic decisions. Also according to SDG5, eliminating harmful practices-such as child marriage before age 18-is a prerequisite for women's economic empowerment. Using national data for 4,129 married women 15-43 years who took part in the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS 1998-2012), we performed autoregressive, cross-lagged panel analyses to assess whether women's first marriage in adulthood (at 18 years or older, as reported in 2006), was positively associated with their long-term post-marital economic empowerment, measured as their engagement in market work and latent family economic agency in 2012. Women's first marriage in adulthood had positive unadjusted associations with their market work and family economic agency in 2012. These associations persisted after accounting for market work and family economic agency in 2006, pre-marital resources for empowerment, and cumulative fertility. Policies to discourage child marriage may show promise to enhance women's long-term post-marital economic empowerment.
Background:
Early pubertal timing in girls is one of the best-replicated antecedents of a range of mental health problems during adolescence, but few researchers have examined the duration of these effects.
Methods:
We leverage a nationally representative sample (N = 7802 women) managed prospectively from adolescence over a period of ∼14 years to examine associations of age at menarche with depressive symptoms and antisocial behaviors in adulthood.
Results:
Earlier ages at menarche were associated with higher rates of both depressive symptoms and antisocial behaviors in early-middle adulthood largely because difficulties that started in adolescence did not attenuate over time.
Conclusions:
These findings indicate that the emotional sequelae of puberty extend further than documented in previous research, and suggest that earlier development may place girls on a life path from which it may be difficult to deviate. The American Academy of Pediatrics already provides guidelines for identifying and working with patients with early pubertal timing. Pediatricians and adolescent health care providers should also be attuned to early maturers' elevated mental health risk and sensitive to the potential duration of changes in mental health that begin at puberty.
This paper develops and empirically tests a theory of the market for “child brides”—prepubescent girls whose parents marry them to adult men. We argue that parental preference for sons over daughters creates a supply of, and demand for, prepubescent brides in impoverished societies. Evidence from India, one of the most son-preferring and child-bride populous nations in the world, supports our theory’s predictions: stronger son preference is associated with the birth of more unwanted daughters, younger postpubescent-female age at marriage, and a higher incidence of prepubescent brides. Moreover, son preference has a stronger positive association with prepubescent brides where poverty is more extreme; prepubescent brides have lower quality husbands than postpubescent brides; and stronger son preference is associated with a higher ratio of traditional-marriage-aged males to females.
I use a nationally representative dataset for Uganda to estimate the impact of marriage age on later life outcomes for women and also on their children’s health outcomes. I use plausibly exogenous variation in the age of menarche of women to instrument for their mar- riage age. A delay of one year in physical maturation of women leads to an increase of 0.45 years in their marriage age. Using age at menarche as an instrument in a Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) framework, I find that a one year delay in marriage leads to an increase of 0.5-0.75 years of education and an increase of about 5-10 percent in the chance of being fully literate. I also find large and significant negative effects of earlier marriage on other out- comes such as labour force participation, decision making power, perceived social status, contraceptive use and spousal characteristics. Additionally, In terms of intergenerational effects of early marriage, I find significant negative effects of early marriage on the child’s hemoglobin levels, probability of being anemic and severely anemic. I also find negligible negative effects on Body Mass Index (BMI), height and weight. Using diagnostic checks and several robustness checks, I provide evidence that the instrument satisfies the inclusion and exclusion restrictions, thus raising the causal nature of the estimates.
We use nationally representative household data from India to establish the intergenerational effect of early marriage on a broad set of health and educational investments and outcomes, and to explicate the underlying mechanisms. The empirical strategy utilizes variation in age at menarche to obtain exogenous variation in the age at marriage. We find that delayed marriage results in significantly better child health and educational outcomes. We further analyze a subsample of uneducated child brides to show that the age at marriage matters by itself, independently of its effects via the woman's educational attainment and her marriage market outcome. From a household-decision-making perspective, the effects appear to be due (at least in part) to a reduction in desired and actual fertility as a result of later marriage, which may be associated with a quantity/quality tradeoff.
Background
: Studies in South Asia suggest that child marriage is a strong risk factor for intimate partner violence (IPV), but evidence outside the region is lacking.
Methods
: This study uses standardized data from demographic and health surveys in 34 countries to test the hypothesis that young women (age 20–24) who married as children are at increased risk of past year physical and/or sexual IPV as compared with those women who married as adults.
Results
: Globally, 9% of respondents were married before they turned 15; another 25% were married between the ages of 15 and 17. Past year physical and/or sexual IPV was higher among women who married as children (29%) compared with those who married as adults (20%). This difference persisted in logistic regression models that adjust for sociodemographic characteristics [odds ratio (OR) 1.41 (1.30–1.52) for marriage before 15, and 1.42 (1.35–1.50) for marriage at 15–17]. However, there was considerable heterogeneity between countries: marriage before age 15 was associated with a combined measure of past year physical and/or sexual IPV in nine countries; women married between 15 and 17 were at increased risk of physical and/or sexual IPV in 19 countries. This heterogeneity was most evident in sub-Saharan Africa, and warrants further investigation in so far as it may help identify protective policies and norms.
Conclusion
: Substantial reductions in IPV will likely require interventions to combat child marriage itself and to protect women from IPV within child marriages.
The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.
We discuss a method for improving causal inferences called ‘‘Coarsened Exact Matching’’ (CEM), and the new ‘‘Monotonic Imbalance Bounding’’ (MIB) class of matching methods from which CEM is derived. We summarize what is known about CEM and MIB, derive and illustrate several new desirable statistical properties of CEM, and then propose a variety of useful extensions. We show that CEM possesses a wide range of statistical properties not available in most other matching methods but is at the same time exceptionally easy to comprehend and use. We focus on the connection between theoretical properties and practical applications. We also make available easy-to-use open source software for R, Stata, and SPSS that implement all our suggestions.
This contribution relies on four different approaches and data sources to assess and discuss the impact of child marriage on secondary school enrollment and completion in Uganda. The four data sources are: (1) qualitative evidence on differences in community and parental preferences for the education of boys and girls and on the higher likelihood of girls to drop out of school in comparison to boys; (2) reasons declared by parents as to why their children have dropped out of school; (3) reasons declared by secondary school principals as to why students drop out; and (4) econometric estimation of the impact of child marriage on secondary school enrollment and completion. Together, the four approaches provide strong evidence that child marriage reduces secondary school enrollment and completion for girls with substantial implications for agency.
Sex-based discrimination has resulted in severe demographic imbalances between males and females, culminating in a large number of missing women in several countries around the world. We provide new estimates and projections of the number of missing females and of the roles played by prenatal and postnatal factors in this imbalance. We estimate time series of the number of missing females, the number of excess female deaths, and the number of missing female births for the world and selected countries. Estimates are provided for 1970-2010 and projections are made from 2010 to 2050. We show that the estimates of these different indicators are consistent with one another and account for the dynamics of the population of missing females over time. We conclude that the number of missing females has steadily risen in the past decades, reaching 126 million in 2010, and the number is expected to peak at 150 million in 2035. Excess mortality was the dominant cause of missing females in the past, and this is expected to remain the case in future decades in spite of the recent rise of prenatal sex selection. The annual number of newly missing females reached 3.4 million in 2010 and is expected to remain above 3 million every year until 2050.
In the current study, we tested for gene × environment interactions in the association between pubertal timing and adolescent depression by examining how socioeconomic factors might moderate age at menarche’s relation with depressive symptoms. Participants comprised 630 female twin and sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Consistent with previous studies, results showed that genetic predispositions toward later menarche were associated with fewer depressive symptoms and that genetic predispositions toward earlier menarche were associated with more depressive symptoms. However, this pattern was subtle and evident only in girls from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Although girls from lower socioeconomic families showed the highest overall levels of depression, their symptoms appeared unrelated to timing of physical development through either a genetic or an environmental path.
We use nationally representative data from India on test scores in an instrumental variable framework to identify the effects of early age marriages of girls on the human capital of their children. Early age marriages reduce mother’s educational attainment, which can adversely impact the education outcomes of their children. On the other hand, better marriage prospects of young brides may compensate and improve children’s educational outcomes by way of resource provision. Consequently, the effect of early age marriages of girls on their children is theoretically ambiguous and warrants an empirical examination. In our empirical analysis, we use variation in age at menarche to instrument for age at marriage. Our estimates show that a delay of one year in the age at marriage of the mother increases the probability of being able to do the most challenging arithmetic and reading tasks on the administered test by 3.5 percentage points.
This research explored sex differences in the pathways linking pubertal timing to depression across 4 years. A sample of 167 youth (M age = 12.41 years, SD = 1.19) and their caregivers completed measures of puberty and semistructured interviews of interpersonal stress and youth depression. Youth reported on psychological (negative self-focus, anxious arousal) and social-behavioral (coping) characteristics; parents reported on youths' social-behavioral characteristics (withdrawal/social problems) and deviant peer affiliations. Early maturation predicted stable high trajectories of depression in girls; although early maturing boys showed low initial levels of depression, they did not differ from girls by the final wave of the study. Latent growth curve analyses identified several psychological, social-behavioral, and interpersonal pathways accounting for the contribution of pubertal timing to initial and enduring risk for depression in girls as well as emerging risk for depression in boys. These findings provide novel insight into multilevel processes accounting for sex differences in depression across the adolescent transition.
The paper examines the relationship between heterogeneity bias and strict exogeneity in a distributed lag regression of y on x. The relationship is very strong when x is continuous, weaker when x is discrete, and non-existent as the order of the distributed lag becomes infinite. The individual specific random variables introduce nonlinearity and heteroskedasticity; so the paper provides an appropriate framework for the estimation of multivariate linear predictors. Restrictions are imposed using a minimum distance estimator. It is generally more efficient than the conventional estimators such as quasi-maximum likelihood. There are computationally simple generalizations of two- and three-stage least squares that achieve this efficiency gain. Some of these ideas are illustrated using the sample of Young Men in the National Longitudinal Survey. The paper reports regressions on the leads and lags of variables measuring union coverage, SMSA, and region. The results indicate that the leads and lags could have been generated just by a random intercept. This gives some support for analysis of covariance type estimates; these estimates indicate a substantial heterogeneity bias in the union, SMSA, and region coefficients.
This article discusses the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG), on gender equality and women's empowerment. It explores the concept of women's empowerment and highlights ways in which the indicators associated with this Goal – on education, employment, and political participation – can contribute to it.
The CES-D scale is a short self-report scale designed to measure depressive symptomatology in the general population. The items of the scale are symptoms associated with depression which have been used in previously validated longer scales. The new scale was tested in household interview surveys and in psychiatric settings. It was found to have very high internal consistency and adequate test- retest repeatability. Validity was established by pat terns of correlations with other self-report measures, by correlations with clinical ratings of depression, and by relationships with other variables which support its construct validity. Reliability, validity, and factor structure were similar across a wide variety of demographic characteristics in the general population samples tested. The scale should be a useful tool for epidemiologic studies of de pression.
This article explores the connections between poverty and the early marriage of girls. These links are rarely acknowledged in development research, policy and practice, despite the fact that in parts of sub- Saharan Africa, where women form the majority of the poor, it is estimated that over 60 per cent of girls under 19 are married (UN 2000). Poverty is characterised by both economic and social factors; in this paper, social factors are the primary focus because of the gender disparities in these social indicators. Early marriage perpetuates the feminisation of poverty, preventing girls from attaining their full potential in terms of developing their social capabilities. Hence, it violates girls' human rights, especially their right to sexual and reproductive choice and health care. The article ends by proposing an agenda for change.
Purpose:
Little information exists on the mental health implications of child marriage in Africa. This study examined the association between child marriage and suicidal ideation and suicide attempt among girls aged 10-17 years.
Methods:
Data were drawn from a 2007 cross-sectional survey conducted in the Amhara region, Ethiopia. Multilevel logistic regression was used to analyze risk factors for suicidality.
Results:
Approximately 5.2% of girls reported ever being married, 5.4% were promised in marriage, and 9.3% reported receiving marriage requests. Girls who were ever married (odds ratio [OR] = 1.81; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.03-3.18), were promised in marriage (OR = 2.35; 95% CI = 1.38-4.01) or had received marriage requests (OR = 2.29; 95% CI = 1.46-3.59) were significantly more likely than girls who were never in the marriage process to have had suicidal thoughts in the past 3 months. Residence in communities with high involvement in stopping child marriage was protective of suicidal ideation. The odds of suicide attempt were twice as high among girls with marriage requests as among those with none.
Conclusions:
Child marriage was associated with increased odds of suicidality. Findings call for stronger community engagement in child marriage prevention and mental health support for child brides.
Derived and tested a short form of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) for reliability and validity among 1,206 well older adults (aged 65–98 yrs). The 10-item screening questionnaire, the CESD-10, showed good predictive accuracy when compared to the full-length 20-item version of the CES-D. The CESD-10 showed an expected positive correlation with poorer health status scores and a strong negative correlation with positive affect. Retest correlations for the CESD-10 were comparable to those in other studies. The CESD-10 was administered again after 12 mo. Data were based on 80% of the original sample. Scores were stable with strong correlation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We look for evidence of habituation in twenty waves of German panel data: do individuals tend to return to some baseline level of well-being after life and labour market events? Although the strongest life satisfaction effect is often at the time of the event, we find significant lag and lead effects. We cannot reject the hypothesis of complete adaptation to marriage, divorce, widowhood, birth of child and layoff. However, there is little evidence of adaptation to unemployment for men. Men are somewhat more affected by labour market events (unemployment and layoffs) than are women but in general the patterns of anticipation and adaptation are remarkably similar by sex.
Despite the devastating impact of child marriage (marriage before the age of 18 years) on health, no study has yet evaluated its impact on mental health in the general adult population. This article presents nationally representative data on the prevalence, sociodemographic correlates, and psychiatric comorbidity of child marriage among women in the United States.
Data were drawn from the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. We limited our analyses to the sample of women (N = 24 575) with a known age at first marriage, of whom 18 645 had been or were presently married.
The prevalence of child marriage among women was 8.9%. Demographic factors associated with child marriage were black and American Indian/Alaska Native ethnicities, age at interview of >45 years, low educational level, low income, and living in the South and rural areas of the United States. The overall lifetime and 12-month rates of psychiatric disorders were higher for women who married as children, compared with women who married as adults. In addition, women who married as children were more likely to seek and access health services, compared with women who married in adulthood.
Child marriage increases the risk of lifetime and current psychiatric disorders in the United States. Support for psychiatric vulnerabilities among women married in childhood is required.
This paper analyzes the causal relationships between marriage and subjective well-being in a longitudinal data set spanning 17 years. We find evidence that happier singles opt more likely for marriage and that there are large differences in the benefits from marriage between couples. Potential, as well as actual, division of labor seems to contribute to spouses’ well-being, especially for women and when there is a young family to raise. In contrast, large differences in the partners’ educational level have a negative effect on experienced life satisfaction.
Women are fecund for a shorter period of their lives than men. This paper investigates how differential fecundity interacts with marriage, labor and financial markets to affect gender roles. The main findings of the paper are: (i) Differential fecundity does not have any market invariant gender effect. (ii) Gender roles depend on competition for mates in the marriage market and the way in which ex-post differences in earnings a ect that competition. (iii) Gender differences in the labor market can occur without corresponding differences in labor market opportunities, productivities in child rearing, or social norms. (iv) With uncertainty inhuman capital accumulation and no insurance against this uncertainty, the model generates behavior which is consistent with observed gender roles.
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. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..
IN PREVIOUS studies [l] it has been established that a cluster of social events requiring change in ongoing life adjustment is significantly associated with the time of illness onset. Similarly, the relationship of what has been called ‘life stress,’ ‘emotional stress,’ ‘object loss,’ etc. and illness onset has been demonstrated by other investigations [2-131. It has been adduced from these studies that this clustering of social or life events achieves etiologic significance as a necessary but not sufficient cause of illness and accounts in part for the time of onset of disease. Methodologically, the interview or questionnaire technique used in these studies has yielded only the number and types of events making up the cluster. Some estimate of the magnitude of these events is now required to bring greater precision to this area of research and to provide a quantitative basis for new epidemiological studies of diseases. This report defines a method which achieves this requisite. METHOD
Cultural differences in the reporting of depressive symptoms among older people were examined using the Center for Epidemiological
Studies Depression (CES-D) scale in five Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Korea, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Previous
work in Asian samples—principally North American immigrants—suggested differential functioning of the CES-D. The four-factor
solution established in the original studies of the CES-D was replicated for all countries using a confirmatory factor analytic
approach. It was, however, demonstrated that little information was lost in considering full-scale scores rather than the
four subscales separately. The behavior of the CES-D in older Asian populations was found to be comparable to results obtained
in North American and European cultures. Significant somatization of depression in these Asian samples was not found. There
appears to be a general factor measuring depressed mood across older populations. The results support the validity of comparing
responses on the CES-D across cultures.
Research on the relations between specific stressors and specific psychological outcomes among children and adolescents is reviewed. Specificity, the notion that particular risk factors are uniquely related to particular outcomes is discussed from a theoretical perspective, and models of specificity are described. Several domains of stressors are examined from a specificity framework (e.g., exposure to violence, abuse, and divorce/marital conflict) in relation to broad-band outcomes of internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Studies that tested for specificity conducted within the past 15 years are examined, and definitional problems are highlighted. Little evidence for specificity was found. Methodological problems in the literature and the lack of theory-driven specificity research are discussed, and directions for future research are identified.