Social Norms and Aspirations: Age of Marriage and Education in Rural India

World Development, 2013, vol. 47, issue C, 1-15

Abstract: Using a unique dataset that I collected in three villages in semi-arid India, I analyze the role of perceived returns to education and social norms regarding the ideal age of marriage in the educational plans, i.e., aspirations, parents have for their children. I show that perceptions of the ideal age of marriage significantly constrain the education that parents aspire to have for their daughters, but not their sons. Furthermore, aspirations are sensitive to the perceived returns to higher education in the case of boys, but not in the case of girls.

Keywords: female education; social norms; Asia; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X13000338
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:47:y:2013:i:c:p:1-15

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.01.027

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().