 Affording expensive ceremonies: Evidence from quinceañeras in MexicoMizuhiro Suzuki Journal of Development Economics, 2025, vol. 174, issue C Abstract: Despite their limited resources, low-income households in developing countries spend considerably on festivals and ceremonies. How do they afford this, and how do such events affect their economic outcomes? I address these questions using a coming-of-age ceremony in Latin cultures called a quinceañera. To overcome the endogeneity associated with ceremony timing, I exploit a unique feature of quinceañeras that only households with a 15-year-old girl have the ceremony. With repeated cross-sectional data from Mexico, I show that households fund quinceañeras using savings, transfers from other households, and increased labor supply by mothers. However, quinceañeras decrease the probability that households engage in non-agricultural businesses, suggesting that ceremonial expenses crowd out business resources. My study provides insights into how households facing incomplete credit markets in developing countries manage large expenditures. Keywords: Festivals; Credit; Saving; Small and medium enterprises; Social networks (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:174:y:2025:i:c:s0304387824001974 DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103448 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier |
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