中文摘要
我们研究总体经济状况如何影响撒哈拉以南非洲和印度的结婚时机，尤其关注童婚。在这两个地区，婚姻都伴随着大量货币或实物转移：撒哈拉以南非洲普遍存在彩礼，印度则存在嫁妆。在一个由父母选择子女何时结婚的简单婚姻市场均衡模型中，收入冲击会影响结婚年龄，因为婚姻支付是一种消费平滑手段，对女方家庭而言尤其如此。与模型预测一致，我们发现，干旱使年度农作物产量减少10%至15%、总收入减少4%至5%，并对来自这两个地区的40万名女性样本的婚姻行为产生相反的影响：在撒哈拉以南非洲，干旱使进入童婚的年度风险率上升3%，而在印度，干旱使这一风险率下降4%。干旱导致的结婚年龄变化与生育率变化相关，在撒哈拉以南非洲尤其如此，同时也与观测到的婚姻支付下降相关。我们的结果表明，结婚年龄会对总体经济状况的短期变化作出反应，而婚姻支付决定了这一反应的方向。这意味着，要制定有效的政策来遏制童婚并改善对女儿的人力资本投资，理解婚姻市场制度的经济作用至关重要。
Abstract
We study how aggregate economic conditions affect the timing of marriage, and particularly child marriage, in Sub‐Saharan Africa and in India. In both regions, substantial monetary or in‐kind transfers occur with marriage: bride price across Sub‐Saharan Africa and dowry in India. In a simple equilibrium model of the marriage market in which parents choose when their children marry, income shocks affect the age of marriage because marriage payments are a source of consumption smoothing, particularly for a woman's family. As predicted by our model, we show that droughts, which reduce annual crop yields by 10 to 15% and aggregate income by 4 to 5%, have opposite effects on the marriage behavior of a sample of 400,000 women in the two regions: in Sub‐Saharan Africa they increase the annual hazard into child marriage by 3%, while in India droughts reduce such a hazard by 4%. Changes in the age of marriage due to droughts are associated with changes in fertility, especially in Sub‐Saharan Africa, and with declines in observed marriage payments. Our results indicate that the age of marriage responds to short‐term changes in aggregate economic conditions and that marriage payments determine the sign of this response. This suggests that, in order to design successful policies to combat child marriage and improve investments in daughters' human capital, it is crucial to understand the economic role of marriage market institutions.