IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-20-00091.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Child marriage: some facts from selected Indian states

Author

Listed:
  • Tanusree Mishra

    (Sister Nibedita Government General Degree College for Girls)

  • Tanmoyee Banerjee (Chatterjee)

    (Jadavpur University)

Abstract

Child marriage of daughters, a social evil still prevails in many parts of India. The present study explores some causes of this social evil using DLHS4(District Level Health Survey) data while taking into account the state level variation in incidence of child marriage.We find that the probability of marriage of a girl child before legal age decreases for a son-dominant household where son dominance is instrumented using a dummy variable indicating the sex of first born child. Also, marriage pattern of parents, in terms of age difference and education difference, has influence on early marriage of girl children. Further, we observe that the incidence of child marriage is high among the poor measured in terms of asset ownership, in tribal and Muslim families.Data exploration shows that tribal populated North-East states of India, though matriarchal in nature are characterized by higher incidence of girl child marriage compared to other states in India.

Suggested Citation

  • Tanusree Mishra & Tanmoyee Banerjee (Chatterjee), 2020. "Child marriage: some facts from selected Indian states," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(3), pages 2093-2110.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-20-00091
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2020/Volume40/EB-20-V40-I3-P183.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean Drèze & Geeta Gandhi Kingdon, 2001. "School Participation in Rural India," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(1), pages 1-24, February.
    2. Jungmin Lee, 2008. "Sibling size and investment in children’s education: an asian instrument," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(4), pages 855-875, October.
    3. Schultz, T. Paul, 2008. "Population Policies, Fertility, Women's Human Capital, and Child Quality," Handbook of Development Economics, in: T. Paul Schultz & John A. Strauss (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 52, pages 3249-3303, Elsevier.
    4. Adriana D. Kugler & Santosh Kumar, 2017. "Preference for Boys, Family Size, and Educational Attainment in India," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(3), pages 835-859, June.
    5. Siwan Anderson, 2007. "The Economics of Dowry and Brideprice," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 151-174, Fall.
    6. Sylvestre Gaudin, 2011. "Son Preference in Indian Families: Absolute Versus Relative Wealth Effects," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(1), pages 343-370, February.
    7. Geetika Dang & Vani S. Kulkarni & Raghav Gaiha, 2018. "Why Dowry Deaths Have Risen in India?," ASARC Working Papers 2018-03, The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre.
    8. Daniel Rosenblum, 2013. "The effect of fertility decisions on excess female mortality in India," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(1), pages 147-180, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Emla Fitzsimons & Bansi Malde, 2014. "Empirically probing the quantity–quality model," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(1), pages 33-68, January.
    2. Tin-chi Lin & Alícia Adserà, 2013. "Son Preference and Children’s Housework: The Case of India," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 32(4), pages 553-584, August.
    3. Ebert, Cara & Vollmer, Sebastian, 2022. "Girls unwanted – The role of parents’ child-specific sex preference for children’s early mental development," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    4. Peng, Fei & Anwar, Sajid & Kang, Lili, 2022. "Number of siblings, access to treated water and returns to education in China," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 526-538.
    5. Shuang Chen, 2020. "Parental Investment After the Birth of a Sibling: The Effect of Family Size in Low-Fertility China," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(6), pages 2085-2111, December.
    6. Adriana D. Kugler & Santosh Kumar, 2017. "Preference for Boys, Family Size, and Educational Attainment in India," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(3), pages 835-859, June.
    7. Nooshin Rashti Mohammad & Ali Taieb Nia & Sajjad Barkhordari, 2024. "The Casual Effect of Family Size on the Human Capital in Iranian Society," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(1), pages 4056-4071, March.
    8. Rajat Deb, 2016. "Determinants of Savings in Sukanya Samriddhi Account: Evidence from Tripura," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 5(2), pages 120-140, July.
    9. Tien Vu, 2014. "One male offspring preference: evidence from Vietnam using a split-population model," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 689-715, December.
    10. Chen, Qihui, 2021. "Population policy, family size and child malnutrition in Vietnam – Testing the trade-off between child quantity and quality from a child nutrition perspective," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    11. Mookerjee, Mehreen & Ojha, Manini & Roy, Sanket, 2023. "Family planning practices: Examining the link between contraception and child health," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    12. Onur Altindag, 2016. "Son Preference, Fertility Decline, and the Nonmissing Girls of Turkey," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(2), pages 541-566, April.
    13. Cristina Borra & Ana Costa-Ramón & Libertad González Luna & Almudena Sevilla, 2021. "The causal effect of an income shock on children’s human capital," Economics Working Papers 1789, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    14. Ahmed Elsayed & Olivier Marie, 2020. "Less School (Costs), More (Female) Education? Lessons from Egypt Reducing Years of Compulsory Schooling," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 20-037/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    15. S Anukriti & Sungoh Kwon & Nishith Prakash, 2018. "Household Savings and Marriage Payments: Evidence from Dowry in India," Working papers 2018-09, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    16. Avinash Kishore & Dean Spears, 2014. "Having a Son Promotes Clean Cooking Fuel Use in Urban India: Women's Status and Son Preference," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(4), pages 673-699.
    17. Bhalotra, Sonia & Chakravarty, Abhishek & Gulesci, Selim, 2020. "The price of gold: Dowry and death in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    18. Azam Mehtabul & Hang Saing Chan, 2018. "Is There Really a Trade-Off? Family Size and Investment in Child Quality in India," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 18(1), pages 1-12, January.
    19. Libois, François & Somville, Vincent, 2018. "Fertility, household size and poverty in Nepal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 311-322.
    20. Surabhi Garg & Srijit Mishra, 2024. "Effect of demand and supply side factors on school education outcomes in India," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2024-013, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    child marriage; son-dominant; marriage pattern; multilevel; state level;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-20-00091. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.