IFS/STICERD/UCL Development Work in Progress Seminar & IFS/STICERD/UCL Development Work in Progress Seminar
Revealed Beliefs and the Marriage Market Return to Education
Alison Andrew (Institute for Fiscal Studies), joint with Abi Adams (Oxford University)
Thursday 11 November 2021 12:30 - 14:00
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About this event
This paper explores how parents in Rajasthan, India decide how long to keep a daughter in school and when, and to who, to get her married. We develop a dynamic model of parental decision making in which parents take schooling and marriage decisions under uncertainty about the future marriage offers they will receive. Thus, in addition to their preferences, parents' choices are driven by their beliefs about how the probability of receiving high-quality marriage offers in the future and, importantly, on how this probability depends on a daughter's age and education. We use this model to develop a novel hypothetical-choice tool that, by varying the degree of certainty over future marriage offers described in the hypothetical scenarios, can identify both preferences and probabilistic beliefs without the direct elicitation of probabilities. We find that parents believe their to be a large marriage-market return to girls' education and that this drives much of the investment that parents' make in their daughters' education. And while parents would prefer, other things being equal, to delay a daughters' marriage until at least age 18, a belief that marriage-market prospects begin to deteriorate with age once a daughter is out of school creates an incentive to parents to accept early marriage offers.
This seminar series is jointly organized by the IFS, STICERD, and UCL.
IFS/STICERD/UCL Development Economics Work In Progress seminars are held on Thursdays in term time at 14:00-15:00, at the IFS, unless specified otherwise.
Seminar organisers: Oriana Bandiera (STICERD, LSE), Imran Rasul (UCL), Britta Augsburg (IFS) and Jonathan Weigel (LSE).
For further information please contact Britta Augsburg: britta_a@ifs.org.uk.
Registration is required, via our mailing list:
Please use this link to subscribe or unsubscribe to the Development Economics Work In Progress seminars mailing list (developmentwip).
This seminar series is jointly organized by the IFS, STICERD, and UCL.
IFS/STICERD/UCL Development Economics Work In Progress seminars are held on Thursdays in term time at 14:00-15:00, at the IFS, unless specified otherwise.
Seminar organisers: Oriana Bandiera (STICERD, LSE), Imran Rasul (UCL), Britta Augsburg (IFS) and Jonathan Weigel (LSE).
For further information please contact Britta Augsburg: britta_a@ifs.org.uk.
Registration is required, via our mailing list:
Please use this link to subscribe or unsubscribe to the Development Economics Work In Progress seminars mailing list (developmentwip).