IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucg/wpaper/0015.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Marriage and Power: Age at first marriage and spousal age gap in Lesser Developed Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Guilland Carmichael

Abstract

This paper examines age at first marriage for women and spousal age gap as an indicator for female agency from 1950 until 2005. Using a dataset of 77 LDCs this paper seeks to explore which variables determine differences at a country level in marriage patterns. We look at the influence of urbanisation, education, percentage population of Muslim faith, and family type. We find that education is key in determining at what age women marry, having as would be expected a positive effect on age at first marriage and depressing spousal age gap. Urbanisation is significant, with a positive effect on age and negative on spousal age gap, although the effect is not very large. The percentage Muslim variable depresses female age at first marriage and increases spousal age gap but only when family type is not controlled for. The initially strong negative effect of percentage population Muslim over the period under consideration on age of first marriage has decreased, which raises some interesting questions about the role of Islam in female empowerment.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Guilland Carmichael, 2011. "Marriage and Power: Age at first marriage and spousal age gap in Lesser Developed Countries," Working Papers 0015, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucg:wpaper:0015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cgeh.nl/sites/default/files/WorkingPapers/CGEH.WP_.No15.Carmichael.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gilles Duranton & Andres Rodríguez-Pose & Richard Sandall, 2009. "Family Types and the Persistence of Regional Disparities in Europe," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 85(1), pages 23-47, January.
    2. Tine De Moor & Jan Luiten Van Zanden, 2010. "Girl power: the European marriage pattern and labour markets in the North Sea region in the late medieval and early modern period1," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 63(1), pages 1-33, February.
    3. Becker, Gary S, 1992. "Fertility and the Economy," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 5(3), pages 185-201, August.
    4. Malanima, Paolo, 2005. "Urbanisation and the Italian economy during the last millennium," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(1), pages 97-122, April.
    5. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-846, July-Aug..
    6. repec:cai:poeine:pope_301_0067 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Marriage: Part II," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(2), pages 11-26, Part II, .
    8. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "A Theory of Marriage," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, pages 299-351, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Jan Luiten van Zanden, 2011. "The Malthusian Intermezzo - Women’s wages and human capital formation between the Late Middle Ages and the Demographic Transition of the 19th century," Working Papers 0014, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    10. Jennifer Olmsted, 2005. "Gender, Aging, And The Evolving Arab Patriarchal Contract," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 53-78.
    11. repec:ucp:bknber:9780226740867 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Stimpfle, Alexander & Stadelmann, David, 2016. "Marriage Age Affects Educational Gender Inequality: International Evidence," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145492, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Alberto Bisin & Thierry Verdier, 2010. "The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Socialization," NBER Working Papers 16512, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Kota Ogasawara & Mizuki Komura, 2022. "Consequences of war: Japan’s demographic transition and the marriage market," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(3), pages 1037-1069, July.
    4. Rania Gihleb & Osnat Lifshitz, 2022. "Dynamic Effects of Educational Assortative Mating on Labor Supply," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 46, pages 302-327, October.
    5. Steven N. Durlauf & Ananth Seshadri, 2003. "Is assortative matching efficient?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 21(2), pages 475-493, March.
    6. Eugene Choo & Shannon Seitz & Aloysius Siow, 2008. "The Collective Marriage Matching Model: Identification, Estimation and Testing," Working Papers tecipa-340, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    7. Lepinteur, Anthony & Flèche, Sarah & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2016. "My Baby Takes the Morning Train: Gender Identity, Fairness, and Relative Labor Supply Within Households," IZA Discussion Papers 10382, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Tetyana Zubro, 2014. "Vnútropolitické Determinanty Krízovej Situácie Na Ukrajine," Almanach (Actual Issues in World Economics and Politics), Ekonomická univerzita, Fakulta medzinárodných vzťahov, vol. 9(1), pages 73-85.
    9. Marianne Bertrand & Emir Kamenica & Jessica Pan, 2015. "Gender Identity and Relative Income within Households," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(2), pages 571-614.
    10. Davi B. Costa, 2021. "Benefits of marriage as a search strategy," Papers 2108.04885, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2021.
    11. Wolfgang Frimmel & Martin Halla & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2014. "Can Pro-Marriage Policies Work? An Analysis of Marginal Marriages," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(4), pages 1357-1379, August.
    12. Gordon B. Dahl & Enrico Moretti, 2004. "The Demand for Sons: Evidence from Divorce, Fertility, and Shotgun Marriage," NBER Working Papers 10281, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Marion Leturcq, 2011. "Competing marital contracts? The marriage after civil union in France," Working Papers halshs-00655585, HAL.
    14. Alessandro Cigno, 2011. "The Economics of Marriage," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 12(s1), pages 28-41, May.
    15. Jara-Díaz, Sergio & Rosales-Salas, Jorge, 2017. "Beyond transport time: A review of time use modeling," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 209-230.
    16. Alm, James & Whittington, Leslie A., 1997. "Income taxes and the timing of marital decisions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 219-240, May.
    17. Prajapati, Hari Ram, 2012. "An Application of Game Theory in Strategic Decision of Marriage Occurrence," MPRA Paper 105344, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2013.
    18. Elizabeth M. Caucutt & Nezih Guner & John Knowles, 2001. "The Timing of Births: A Marriage Market Analysis," Penn CARESS Working Papers 49355d43c11f2314075e8b54e, Penn Economics Department.
    19. Aldy, Joseph, 2019. "Birds of a Feather: Estimating the Value of Statistical Life from Dual-Earner Families," Working Paper Series rwp19-013, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    20. Amore, Mario Daniele & Miller, Danny & Le Breton-Miller, Isabelle & Corbetta, Guido, 2017. "For love and money: Marital leadership in family firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 461-476.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Marriage patterns; female agency; age at first marriage; spousal age gap;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ucg:wpaper:0015. 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: Sarah Carmichael (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cgeuunl.html .

    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.