Income shocks, bride price and child marriage in Turkey

Isabelle Chort (), Rozenn Hotte () and Karine Marazyan
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Isabelle Chort: TREE - Transitions Energétiques et Environnementales - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IUF - Institut universitaire de France - M.E.N.E.S.R. - Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche, IZA - Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit - Institute of Labor Economics
Rozenn Hotte: THEMA - Théorie économique, modélisation et applications - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - CY - CY Cergy Paris Université

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Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of income shocks and bride price on early marriage in Turkey. Weather shocks provide an exogenous source of variation of household income through agricultural production. A decrease in rainfall observed over the 9 months period corresponding to the growing season is found to negatively affect both agricultural production and returns for the majority of crops and vegetables. Data on weather shocks are merged with individual and household level data from the Turkish Demographic and Health Surveys 1998 to 2013. The practice of bride-price, still vivid in many regions of the country, may provide incentives for parents to marry their daughter earlier, when faced with a negative income shock. In addition, marriages precipitated by negative income shocks may present specific features (endogamy, age and education difference between spouses). To study the role of payments to the bride's parents, we interact our measure of shocks with a province-level indicator of a high prevalence of bride-price. We find that girls living in provinces with a high practice of bride-price and exposed to a negative income shocks when aged 12-14 (resp. 12-17) have a 28% (resp. 20%) higher probability to be married before the age of 15 (resp. 18). Such women are also more likely to give birth to their first child before 18 and for those who married religiously first, the civil ceremony is delayed by 2 months on average. Our results suggest that girl marriage still participates to household strategies aimed at mitigating negative income shocks in contemporary Turkey.

Keywords: Child marriage; Income shocks; Bride price; Weather shocks; Turkey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-10-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://univ-pau.hal.science/hal-03258215v2
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Working Paper: Income Shocks, Bride Price and Child Marriage in Turkey (2022)
Working Paper: Income shocks, bride price and child marriage in Turkey (2022)
Working Paper: Income shocks, bride price and child marriage in Turkey (2021)
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