Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
天作之合，父母之命”：包办婚姻是否会限制女性的劳动力市场自主权与参与度？
“Made in heaven, matched by parents”: Can arranged marriage restrict labour market autonomy and participation of women?
摘要
This paper investigates whether parent-arranged marriage causally reduces women’s post-marriage labour market autonomy and participation. We conceptualize and separately estimate two distinct dimensions of women’s labour market engagement: autonomy (the power to decide whether to work) and participation (the actual decision to work), a distinction overlooked in the existing literature. Using a nationally representative sample of approximately 30,000 currently married women from the India Human Development Survey (2011–12), we estimate causal effects using an instrumental variable strategy that exploits the intergenerational persistence of community marriage norms. Our primary instrument uses lagged marriage-type prevalence within state-caste cells; a second, Leave-One-Out instrument—constructed from other-caste groups’ historical patterns—serves simultaneously as a robustness check and a falsification test, with both instruments yielding statistically indistinguishable estimates. Relative to parent-arranged marriages, self-matched marriages causally increase labour market autonomy by 30 percentage points and participation by 14–16 percentage points; jointly-arranged marriages yield gains of 22 and 10–11 percentage points, respectively. These effects are large, given that only 42% of women in our sample report autonomy over work decisions. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the pronounced asymmetry between autonomy and participation arises from structural barriers rather than women’s preferences. Our findings imply that policies targeting marriage norms must be complemented by supply-side labour market interventions to achieve commensurate gains in women’s economic participation.
中文摘要
本文研究父母包办婚姻是否因果性地降低女性婚后劳动力市场自主权与参与率。我们将女性劳动力市场参与概念化为两个不同维度并分别估计：自主权（决定是否工作的权力）与参与（实际工作决策），这一区分在现有文献中被忽视。使用来自印度人类发展调查（2011—12）的约30,000名当前已婚女性的全国代表性样本，我们采用利用社区婚姻规范代际持续性的工具变量策略估计因果效应。我们的主要工具变量使用州—种姓单元内滞后期的婚姻类型流行率；第二个留一法工具变量——由其他种姓群体的历史模式构建——同时作为稳健性检验和证伪检验，两个工具变量得出的估计在统计上无法区分。相对于父母包办婚姻，自选婚姻因果性地使劳动力市场自主权提高30个百分点，参与率提高14—16个百分点；共同安排婚姻分别带来22个百分点和10—11个百分点的增益。鉴于我们样本中仅有42%的女性报告对工作决策拥有自主权，这些效应是巨大的。异质性分析表明，自主权与参与之间的显著不对称源于结构性障碍而非女性偏好。我们的发现意味着，针对婚姻规范的政策必须辅以供给侧劳动力市场干预，才能在女性经济参与方面实现相应增益。