The Indian government proposes to raise the minimum legal marriage age for women: Should we be happy?
DISCLAIMER: This is a citation bomb warning. I am
citing some research literature but, kindly read through till the end.
The Prime Minister’s Cabinet in India recently agreed to
raise the minimum age of marriage for women from 18 years to 21 years, bringing
it to the same level as that of men. In a statement released on Twitter,
the health ministry explained that the measure “would provide more time for
completion of education for the girls and prepare them physiologically and
psychologically to shoulder the responsibility of marriage and children”. Empirical economic literature does confirm
that, for women, a delay in age at marriage raises educational attainment, reduces
desired and actual fertility and improves child health and educational outcomes
(Field & Ambrus, 2008; Jensen and Thornton, 2010; Chari et. al.,2017).[1]
What’s interesting is that average age of marriage in India has already been
rising naturally and currently stands at 22 years. So, it can’t hurt to simply back this up by law, right?
Early marriage is more likely to occur among lower-income households residing in rural areas where, access to good quality higher education and healthcare are low. Such families are less likely to invest in sending daughters out of the village to study and thus, the increased age of marriage for girls may be viewed as a burden by the parents. Poor enforcement of the law in India has meant that many families have been able to get away with ignoring existing age at marriage laws and marrying their daughters off before they turned 18. Chari et. al. (2017) report that all of 38% of the women in their study sample from the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS) of 2005 had married before they had turned 18. Thus, age of marriage laws in themselves don’t work. On the other hand, concerns have been raised on the problems that such an amendment might introduce, whether it is increasing “parents grip on young women’s personal lives” and thus, making it difficult for them to marry a person of their choice, or increasing rates of female foeticide as parents begin to feel that they are a bigger burden (Pathak, 2021).
Despite my scepticism on the benefits of this law change, I
was wondering if the parity in legal age of marriage, isn’t however a promising
development. Every change to the minimum legal age of marriage in India has
always kept them at different levels for men and women. Allowing parity, could
reduce the age-gap between married couples which, may have implications for the
wife’s decision-making power in the household. It should also dispel the
stereotype of “young wife, older husband” that is being perpetuated through the
existing law. Based on a study by Carmichael et. al. (2011), I compare the relationship
between countries’ minimum ages of marriage (MAM) and a global gender
empowerment index created by the World Bank called Gender Inequality Index (GII). I use the 2020 country-level GII rankings and a country-wise
UN dataset on minimum marriage ages for males and females. A country’s GII is
based on outcomes like the maternal mortality ratio, adolescent birth rate,
share of seats in the legislature, access to secondary education and labour
force participation rate. A GII closer to 0 implies greater gender equality in
the country, while a GII closer to 1 implies greater gender inequality. I draw pair-wise
correlations between GII, female MAM[2],
modified ‘Girlpower’ (based on the ‘Girlpower Index’ in Carmichael et. al. (2011))
- Female MAM minus the difference in male and female MAM, an indicator for
equal male and female minimum marriage ages, and finally, the difference in
male and female MAM. The correlation
plot below shows the strength and direction of the relationship between all
these measures.
Correlation plot: What can we tell
about gender inequality from countries’ minimum age of marriage (MAM) laws?
Note: The plot is based on GII and legal marriage age data
from 140 countries, sourced from World Bank and UN datasets respectively. The
brackets report the p-value of the correlations. GII is ‘Gender
Inequality Index’ where, GII = 0 means ‘absolutely
equal’ and, = 1 means ‘absolutely unequal’.
“Girlpower” is a value equal to female MAM minus the difference in male
and female MAM. And indeed, proving my hunch right, there isn’t a very strong
relationship between female MAM and gender inequality but, there is a very
strong positive relationship between a male and female MAM differences and
gender inequality (see boxes within highlighted rectangle). Countries with higher
‘Girlpower’ have lower gender inequality while, gender inequality is lowest
when the minimum ages of marriage are equal for males and females. So, could
the Indian government instead simply lower the minimum age of marriage for boys
to 18 years and let social trends do the rest? I would love to hear some
comments on that.
Links to papers and articles for those interested:
1. Chari et. al., ‘The causal effect of maternal
age at marriage on child wellbeing: Evidence from India’, Journal of
Development Economics, Volume 127, 2017, Pages 42-55, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2017.02.002.
2.
Dhamija, G., and Roychowdhury, P. -
(a)
(2020) Age at Marriage and Women's Labour Market
Outcomes in India. J. Int. Dev., 32: 342– 374. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3456.
(b)
(2018) How women’s age at marriage impacts
domestic violence. Ideas for India. https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/social-identity/how-women-s-age-at-marriage-impacts-domestic-violence.html.
3.
Corno et. al. (2016): Weather Shocks, Age of
Marriage and the Direction of Marriage Payments, Working Paper, No. 40, Università
Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza (DISCE), Milano. http://hdl.handle.net/10419/170637
4.
Carmichael et.al. (2011), “When the heart is
baked, don’t try to knead it”: Marriage age and spousal age gap as a measure of
female ‘agency’," Working Papers 0019, Utrecht University, Centre for
Global Economic History. RePEc:ucg:wpaper:0019.
5.
Pathak, S. (2021). ‘India may raise the age of
marriage for girls. Not everyone thinks that's a good idea’. National Public
Radio. October 2, 2021 • 7:28 AM EDT. https://text.npr.org/1041550200.
6.
Collin, M. and Talbot, T. (2017). "Do
Age-of-Marriage Laws Work? Evidence from a Large Sample of Developing Countries."
CGD Working Paper 458. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/publication/do-agemarriage-laws-work-evidence-large-sample-developing-countries.
7.
Maertens A., Social Norms and Aspirations: Age
of Marriage and Education in Rural India, World Development, Volume 47, 2013,
Pages 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.01.027.
[1] Minimum legal age across religions
may differ within the country, in which case, I use the age applicable to the
majority of the population. Some countries don’t have a minimum legal marriage
age, so they drop out of the analysis.
[2] There
has also been other research such as its effects on women’s labour market
participation, level of domestic violence experienced and so on but, I won’t go
into it here.
Good write up! The question to ask is, 'Are males mature enough to share the responsibilities that are part and parcel of married life at the age of 18? Will it adversely affect the growth in population?'
ReplyDeleteThank you for that! Any action based on the first point will, I think, have to be consistent with the fact that in India, you may join the workforce from the age of 15 and you become an adult by the age of 18. As it is a question of the appropriateness of law, I will quote from a Law Commission consultation report on family law in India (2018), "For equality in the true sense, the insistence on recognising different ages of marriage between consenting adults must be abolished. The age of majority must be recognised uniformly as the legal age for marriage for men and women alike as is determined by the Indian Majority Act,
Delete1875, i.e. eighteen years of age."
As for the latter point, India's family planning programming seems to working as total fertility rate has experienced a steady fall and is currently at replacement levels i.e. 2 children per woman aged 15 to 49 years. It suggests that coercive policies may not be necessary to control population growth.
I am so glad this discussion has been taken up :)
A comment from my dear friend and fellow economist Sujan Bandyopadhyay:
ReplyDelete"Hey! This is a very interesting analysis that you’ve presented.
As you’ve rightly pointed out, the issue of implementation sticks out like a sore thumb as with any other policy/law change in india.
Leaving that aside, I found your analysis on the two effects — the level effect of increasing the marriageable age for women versus the gap in marriageable age between men and women — to be of significance and worth further analysis. While your correlation is a good starting point, my concern is whether or not difference in marriageable age is a leading or lagging indicator of gender equality.
A good next step might be to look at inter-household gender equality for households with a variation in the difference in marriageable ages (this is easier said than done)"
Thank you, Sujan. I agree, the correlation is just a starting point. The comment on inequality indices being leading or lagging indicators of age of marriage laws gives a very nice opening into taking the preliminary evidence further using the same sort of datasets :)
Delete