The Marriage Mystery: Exploring Late Marriage in MENA (original) (raw)
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An important role of marriage institutions, especially in developing countries, is to counter a commitment problem in which a husband faces a socially excessive incentive to separate from their wife once she has made her early contributions to the household; most notably the raising of children. An analysis of the factors which influence the magnitude of this commitment problem is important, but has not been previously performed because this magnitude is not readily observed. We provide a simple model and use it to show that the magnitude of the commitment problem facing a household is revealed by an observable characteristic of Muslim marriages–the deferred dower (mo’akhar). Armed with this measure and household data from Egypt, we find considerable empirical support for a novel prediction of the model: the underlying commitment problem is less severe in places with social norms that give husbands greater authority over household decisions. ∗University of British Columbia. Siwan.An...
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