In Simple Words
Think of a person choosing between two amusement park rides: if ride A (working) is closed, everyone gets in line for ride B (marriage and children). Once ride A opens and offers valuable prizes, people willingly delay standing in line for ride B because stepping out of line to go on ride A yields a much higher immediate reward.
Women aged eighteen to twenty-four
- No study recruiter visits
- Group used for comparison
- Annual recruiter visits
- 5.1 percentage points fewer married
Women aged 15 to 21 at baseline. This does not isolate the mechanism behind delayed marriage.
See source →Research question
In low-income rural settings with few well-paying jobs for women, the opportunity cost of getting married young and raising children is low, leading to early marriage and high fertility. When market returns to female time increase, continuing education or working creates a direct trade-off with early family formation.
Participants
1,361 young women aged 15–21 at baseline (18–24 at follow-up) across 160 rural Indian villages.
Study Design
Randomized field experiment evaluating lifecycle work and family transitions via panel surveys conducted three years after baseline.
Results
Exposure to business process outsourcing recruitment caused a 5.1 percentage point reduction in the likelihood of being married (p < 0.05) and a 5.7 percentage point reduction in having given birth (p < 0.05), alongside a 0.35 decline in lifetime desired fertility (p < 0.01).
Takeaway
Expand high-return labor force opportunities targeted at young women to incentivize voluntary delays in early marriage and childbearing.
Source and citation
See source →Read alongside the research
Plain-English glossary
Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.
- Follow-up
Collecting more information about participants later in a study to see what has happened to them. The term can also mean the length of time researchers keep track of them.
ExampleResearchers interview the same workers three months after a programme ends. That later interview is a follow-up.
GET-IT glossary · Follow-up ↗Read more about follow-up →- Baseline
The starting measurements in a study. Researchers use these to compare what participants were like at the start with what happens later.
ExampleBefore a training programme starts, researchers measure workers’ earnings. That first measurement is the baseline.
GET-IT glossary · Baseline characteristics ↗Read more about baseline →- Percentage points
The difference between two percentages.
ExampleA rise from 40% to 50% is 10 percentage points. Relative to the starting value, that is a 25% increase.
Office for National Statistics · Percentages ↗Read more about percentage points →