Female Opportunity Cost Model of Marriage and Fertility
RCTClinical Trial
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 [2, 13]. When market returns to female time increase, continuing education or working creates a direct trade-off with early family formation [13-16].
Picture this
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) [13, 14]. 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 [13, 15, 16].
What the evidence says
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) [15, 18-20].
- Who was studied
- 1,361 young women aged 15–21 at baseline (18–24 at follow-up) across 160 rural Indian villages [3, 8, 17].
- How
- Randomized field experiment evaluating lifecycle work and family transitions via panel surveys conducted three years after baseline [1, 9, 10, 17].
What to do
Expand high-return labor force opportunities targeted at young women to incentivize voluntary delays in early marriage and childbearing.
From the source
"Women from treatment villages aged 15 to 21 at baseline, the peak age range for marriage and the initiation of childbearing in rural India, were 5-6 percentage points less likely to get married or to have given birth over the three-year period of our intervention." [15]
517 labor market opportunities QJE April '12.pdf