Political role models and child marriage in India

• Author: Carolina Castilla
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rode.12513
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Date: 01 November 2018

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Political role models and child marriage in India

Carolina Castilla

Colgate University, Hamilton, New York

Correspondence

Department of Economics, Colgate

University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY

13346.

Email: ccastilla@colgate.edu

Funding information

United Nations University World Institute

for Development Economics Research

(UNU-WIDER)

Abstract

Drawing data from the most recent wave of the India

Human Development Survey and the year of the first elec-

tion with reserved seats for women, I estimate the effect of

the Panchayati Raj institutions on child marriage. In India,

marriage traditions dictate that two ceremonies take place:

the wedding and the gauna ceremony. These differ in tim-

ing and purpose. After the wedding, the bride and groom

do not necessarily live together. The gauna ceremony indi-

cates the start of marital life and the consummation of the

marriage. Results indicate that women in local government

decrease the likelihood of child marriage, and delay the

age at first marriage and the gauna ceremony. Delaying

marriage has important policy implications for both the

bride and her future children as it improves education,

autonomy over fertility, and health. The results indicate

that after 18 years of implementation, exposure to women

in government can reduce the prevalence of child marriage.

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INTRODUCTION

The status of women in Indian society has not significantly improved despite India’s rapid growth.

In 2015, India was placed in the lowest group of the United Nations Gender Development Index,

which indicates a deviation of more than 10 percent from gender parity in the Human Develop-

ment Index (UNDP, 2016). According to the 2011 census, only 65 percent of women in India

were literate, compared with 82 percent of men (Iyer, Mani, Mishra, & Topalova, 2012). Strong

gender norms and lack of opportunities hinder women’s ability to get an education, participate in

the labor force, and make decisions over marriage and fertility. In India, arranged marriages are

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

©2018 UNU-WIDER. Review of Development Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

DOI: 10.1111/rode.12513

Rev Dev Econ. 2018;22:1409–1431. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rode

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still common practice, and young girls are matched as early as at a couple of years of age. The lat-

est UNICEF report on the world prevalence of child marriage indicates that India has the largest

number (33 percent) of child brides in the world. In an effort to decrease the prevalence of early

marriage, in November of 2007 the Indian government enacted the Prohibition of Child Marriage

Act. The Act establishes severe penalties for those engaging in child marriage, and allows the par-

ties (children at the time of marriage) to get an annulment. The latest figures indicate that among

women aged 20 to 49, 58 percent married before the legal age of 18, and over 25 percent married

prior to turning 15, which is also below the legal age of consent in the country (UNICEF, 2014).

Child marriage has been found to have negative consequences on the young bride’s health,

autonomy, economic opportunities, and her children’s health. Early marriage negatively affects the

bride’s autonomy over contraceptive use and fertility resulting in a higher likelihood of early and

high-risk pregnancies, being at risk of sexually transmitted infections, and experiencing intimate

partner violence (Mathur, Greene, & Malhotra, 2003; Chari, Heath, Maertens, & Fatima, 2017;

Raj, Saggurti, Balaiah, & Silverman, 2009; Svanemyr, Chandra-Mouli, Christiansen, & Mbizvo,

2012). Child marriage also makes young girls more vulnerable because it leads to lower schooling

attainment and diminished opportunities to develop social networks (Chari et al., 2017; Field &

Ambrus, 2008). Young brides are likely to have early pregnancies. Young age childbearing is

associated with complications during pregnancy and delivery, which are leading causes of death

among adolescent girls, in part because young mothers are less likely to seek care (Buchmann

et al., 2017). Children born to young mothers are more likely to be born prematurely and under-

weight, are more prone to illness, and even later in life are more likely to be malnourished (Chari

et al., 2017). Further, children resulting from early marriage are less likely to enrol in school, and

attain lower reading, mathematics, and writing scores (Chari et al., 2017).

The main objective of this paper is to examine the effect of the Panchayati Raj institutions—

which reserve seats at the district level for women Pradhans on a rotating basis—on child mar-

riage. A Pradhan is the leader of a village panchayat. There are reasons for expecting district-level

women Pradhans to have an effect on the practice of child marriage. There can be direct effects of

policies to enforce the legal minimum of marriage by women in leadership positions. While evi-

dence has been found that female elected officials shift policymaking towards increased investment

in public goods preferred by women (Beaman et al., 2011; Chattopadhyay & Duflo, 2004a and

2004b), the authors argue in favor of changes in cultural norms. It is also possible that political

role models have a pervasive effect such that the stereotypes held by men about the role of women

in society change, thus relaxing gender norms in relation to their partners and daughters. Beaman,

Chattopadhyay, Duflo, Pande, and Topalova (2012) find that increased female political representa-

tion improves parental aspirations for daughters (Beaman et al., 2012) and increases the establish-

ment of female-owned businesses in the informal sector (Ghani, Kerr, & O’Connell, 2014), in

addition to decreasing sex selection (Kalsi, 2017).

I draw data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) collected between 2011 and

2012 to estimate the effect of women Pradhans on the incidence of child marriage. The research

design exploits random variation in the timing of the first election with reserved seats for women

Pradhans across districts within a state. While the 73rd and 74th constitutional a mendments were

enacted in 1993, the first elections with reserved seats varied considerably across states and dist ricts.

For instance, West Bengal made adjustments that went into effect during the 1993 election; whereas,

Bihar’s elections were delayed owing to a lawsuit challenging reservations for Other Backward

Castes, and elections in other states were delayed for budgetary reasons (Iyer, Mani, Mishra &

Topalova, 2012). Further, one-third of districts within a state are randomly chosen to have reserved

seats for women Pradhans on each election cycle. As a result, the assignment of reserved seats for

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CASTILLA