Demand for insurance and within-kin-group marriages: Evidence from a West-African country

Rozenn Hotte () and Karine Marazyan

Journal of Development Economics, 2020, vol. 146, issue C

Abstract: We ask whether parents have incentives to marry their children to a member of the kin group in order to better insure against adverse idiosyncratic income shocks. Exploiting original panel data from a household survey collected in Senegal in 2006/2007 and 2011/2012, we find that daughters' within-kin-group marriage helps their parents' household to better smooth food consumption when a parent has fallen ill. This better smoothing is notably driven by the fact that households having married a daughter within the kin group receive relatively more transfers. Our results indicate that parents’ demand for insurance can explain part of their demand for marrying within the kin group their daughter and extend the literature on inter-linkages between marriage decisions and demand for insurance.

Keywords: Marriages; Kinship; Risk-coping; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I32 J12 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:146:y:2020:i:c:s030438782030064x

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102489

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