A growing literature attributes gender inequality in labor market outcomes in part to the reduction in female labor supply after childbirth, the child penalty. However, if social norms constrain married women’s activities outside the home, then marriage can independently reduce employment, even in the absence childbearing. Given the correlation in timing between childbirth and marriage, conventional estimates of child penalties will conflate these two effects. The paper studies the marriage penalty in South Asia, a context featuring conservative gender norms and low female labor force participation. The study introduces a split-sample, pseudo-panel approach that allows for the separation of marriage and child penalties even in the absence of individual-level panel data. Marriage reduces women’s labor force participation in South Asia by 12 percentage points, whereas the marginal penalty of childbearing is small. Consistent with the central roles of both opportunity costs and social norms, the marriage penalty is smaller among cohorts with higher education and less conservative gender attitudes.
Authors
- Citation
- “ Bussolo, Maurizio ; Rexer, Jonah ; Triyana, Margaret . 2024 . Education, Social Norms, and the Marriage Penalty: Evidence from South Asia . Policy Research Working Paper; 10946 . © Washington, DC: World Bank . http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42252 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO . ”
- Collection(s)
- Policy Research Working Papers
- DOI
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-10946
- Identifier externaldocumentum
- 34400802
- Identifier internaldocumentum
- 34400802
- Pages
- 42
- Published in
- United States of America
- RelationisPartofseries
- Policy Research Working Paper; 10946
- Report
- WPS10946
- Rights
- CC BY 3.0 IGO
- Rights Holder
- World Bank
- Rights URI
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/
- UNIT
- Office of the Chief Economist (SARCE)
- URI
- https://hdl.handle.net/10986/42252
- date disclosure
- 2024-10-16
- region geographical
- South Asia
Files
Table of Contents
- 1 Introduction 4
- 2 Data and Empirical Strategy 8
- 2.1 Data 8
- 2.2 Empirical strategy 9
- 2.2.1 Estimation 9
- 2.2.2 Identification of the marriage penalty 12
- 2.2.3 Summary statistics 12
- 3 Results 13
- 3.1 Main results 13
- 3.2 Event-studies 14
- 4 Determinants of the marriage penalty 15
- 4.1 Urban-rural 15
- 4.2 Education 16
- 4.3 Gender attitudes 18
- 5 Conclusion 20
- References 21
- A Appendix 35
