Marriage Age, Social Status and Intergenerational Effects in Uganda

Abstract

I use a nationally representative dataset for Uganda to estimate the impact of marriage age on later life outcomes for women and also on their children’s health outcomes. I use plausibly exogenous variation in the age of menarche of women to instrument for their mar- riage age. A delay of one year in physical maturation of women leads to an increase of 0.45 years in their marriage age. Using age at menarche as an instrument in a Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) framework, I find that a one year delay in marriage leads to an increase of 0.5-0.75 years of education and an increase of about 5-10 percent in the chance of being fully literate. I also find large and significant negative effects of earlier marriage on other out- comes such as labour force participation, decision making power, perceived social status, contraceptive use and spousal characteristics. Additionally, In terms of intergenerational effects of early marriage, I find significant negative effects of early marriage on the child’s hemoglobin levels, probability of being anemic and severely anemic. I also find negligible negative effects on Body Mass Index (BMI), height and weight. Using diagnostic checks and several robustness checks, I provide evidence that the instrument satisfies the inclusion and exclusion restrictions, thus raising the causal nature of the estimates.