Bride Pricing and the Effect of Education on Child Marriage: Evidence from Indonesia

Abstract: This paper investigates if educational attainment among females when they are young affects the incidence of child marriage. There is a general agreement that education delays the time of marriage and thus works as a protective factor against child marriage. However, there is no causal estimate of education on age at marriage. By using educational variation induced from the Indonesian Sekolah Dasar INPRES program among ethnic groups engaged in bride pricing, and information about age at marriage from the Indonesian Intercensal Survey (SUPAS) in 1995, I estimate the effect of education on child marriage for females. Despite strong cross-sectional correlations, instrumental variable analysis estimates suggest that there is no causal effect of primary education on child marriage. Also, there is no evidence of educational spillovers from primary to secondary education, that could have a more important role in raising the age at marriage.