Do marriage markets respond to a natural disaster? The impact of flooding of the Kosi river in India

Madhulika Khanna () and Nishtha Kochhar ()
Additional contact information
Madhulika Khanna: Georgetown University
Nishtha Kochhar: Georgetown University

Journal of Population Economics, 2023, vol. 36, issue 4, No 8, 2276 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper studies the impact of the flooding of the Kosi river on the timing of marriage in the Indian state of Bihar, one of the world’s poorest regions. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that the Kosi floods reduced men’s age at marriage by almost a year and women’s age at marriage by over 4 months. The Kosi floods also decreased the secondary school completion rates of married men and women and married women’s command over economic resources. We interpret these results within a framework of marriage markets, where in the absence of complete credit markets, marriage market payments (dowry) help smooth consumption in response to adverse income shocks. In support of this framework, we find that the impact of the Kosi floods is more pronounced among Hindus (for whom dowry is the traditional marriage payment norm) and among the landless (who are more credit-constrained).

Keywords: Flooding; Gender; Marriage markets; Natural disasters; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 O12 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00148-023-00955-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:jopoec:v:36:y:2023:i:4:d:10.1007_s00148-023-00955-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-023-00955-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().