Beyond the vows: Understanding the causal link between age at marriage and anxiety in Nepal

Karan Babbar, Gaurav Dhamija, Manini Ojha and Kartik Yadav

No 1642, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: This paper investigates the causal effect of age at marriage on women's mental health in Nepal, focusing specifically on anxiety. Using nationally representative data from the latest round of the Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), we address endogeneity in marriage timing by in- strumenting age at marriage with age at menarche, motivated by sociological evidence that menarche strongly in uences parental decisions about the timing of girls' marriages. Our findings show that a one-year delay in age at marriage reduces anxiety levels by 0.08 standard deviation. We find ad- ditional evidence that delayed marriage is associated with significant reductions in marital stress, suggesting that it is a key pathway through which delayed marriage lowers anxiety. These findings contribute to growing evidence on the mental health implications of early marriage and highlight the importance of policies that delay marriage age.

Keywords: age at marriage; age at menarche; marital stress; anxiety; mental health; Nepal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 I12 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-sea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1642

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