Marriage Norms and Fertility Outcomes in Developing Countries

Aniema Atorudibo ()

Studies in Economics from School of Economics, University of Kent

Abstract: Recent UN data show that the lifetime fertility of women in developed countries has fallen below 2.1 live births. By contrast, fertility rates in most developing countries have remained quite high despite falling mortality rates. This paper examines the effect of culture on fertility outcomes in developing countries, using the norms of premarital sexual behaviour as a measure of culture. Three types of norms are identified viz., the emphasis on female early marriage, the emphasis on female virginity at marriage, and weakly censuring premarital sexual behaviour. These differences in premarital rules are a source of identifying variation in the age at first birth and the number of children. Using a sample of women aged 15 to 49 from Africa and Turkey, the study shows that premarital sexual norms significantly affect the age at first birth and the number of children per woman. It finds that the cultural emphasis on early marriage significantly lowers a woman’s age at first birth while it raises her fertility level relative to the culture which weakly censures female premarital sexual relations. Conversely, the emphasis on female virginity at marriage increases the age at first birth and lowers fertility relative to the comparison group.

Keywords: Fertility; Adolescent fertility; Premarital norms; Cultural preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-evo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.kent.ac.uk/economics/repec/2101.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ukc:ukcedp:2101

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Studies in Economics from School of Economics, University of Kent School of Economics, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7FS.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr Anirban Mitra ().