Does education help combat early marriage? The effect of compulsory schooling laws in China

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the relationship between education and early marriage by exploiting the 1986 Compulsory Schooling Laws in China. We find that one additional year of schooling decreases the probability of marriage before age 18 by 1.7% points and increases the age at first marriage by 0.734 years. We examine the role of labour market outcomes, marriage traditions, assortative mating, and peer marriage behaviours. We also find evidence that education decreases fertility outcomes and affects the marriage outcomes of the next generation. This suggests that policies aimed at combating early marriage could start with improving children’s educational attainment.

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I20
• J12
• K30

KEYWORDS:

• Education
• early marriage
• compulsory education laws
• instrumental variable

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ In 2019, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) found that the incidence of early marriage declined from 33.3% in 2000 to 20% in 2018. According to the 2015 Chinese National Census, the rate of marriage before age 18 dropped from 10% among those born in the 1930s to 2% among those born in the 1970s.

² Tibet, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Hainan, Hong Kong, and Macao were not included.

³ The 1986 CSLs implemented in China emphasizes the non-profit nature of compulsory education, and its financial expenditure is mainly paid by the government. On the one hand, the central and local governments incorporate compulsory education funds into the fiscal budgets. Moreover, the CSLs stipulates that the growth rate of financial allocation for compulsory education is higher than that of regular fiscal revenue. This ensures the sustainability of education financing. On the other hand, the CSLs clearly states that students are not required to pay tuition and miscellaneous fees. Therefore, compulsory education in China is entirely free-of-charge, which significantly reduces the pressure of education spending on parents.

⁴ Due to the large inequality in educational attainment across regions, the central government planned to have different levels of implementation across regions and decided to mainly support the less-developed regions. In 1985, prior to the implementation of the CSLs, in Decisions about the Education System Reform, the government announced that the nation would try to support the less-developed regions in reducing their illiteracy rate to the greatest extent possible. Thus, the enforcement of the CSLs differed across regions, as defined by their economic development level as follows: (1) economically developed areas in the eastern region, which include Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, Guangdong, and Hainan; (2) moderately developed areas in the central region, which include Heilongjiang, Jilin, Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei, and Hunan; and (3) economically underdeveloped areas in the western region, which include Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Tibet, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang.

⁵ The proportion of the population aged 16–18 who had received fewer than 9 years of schooling prior to the CSLs is calculated based on the 1% sample of the 1982 Census.

⁶ Money includes one’s salary, bonuses, cash benefits, and material benefits, net of taxes, insurance, and public housing fees.

⁷ “Management duties” refer to an occupation in an organization that has an official management function, such as the chief of a section, the director of a department, the head of a bureau, or a manager.

⁸ “Direct subordinate” refers to a person who takes direct orders from the respondent. A subordinate could be an official worker, a temporary worker, or an unofficial worker.

⁹ In China, marriage traditions are also common and have four features. First, traditional Chinese culture places great importance on the family, with a system of arranged marriages for all young persons at early ages (Thornton and Lin 1994). In this cultural tradition, individual characteristics have limited effects on marriage formation because the Chinese population practices universal and early marriage (Raymo, Park, Xie, and Yeung 2015). Second, the words of the matchmaker also play an important role in marriage. Without such a necessary condition, marriage is invalid and criticized by society. Third, assortative mating is a general rule for mate selection. Young people who are ready for marriage can choose only a spouse within the family who matches them. If there is a large disparity in the property status, then they may be subject to legal sanctions. Fourth, traditional China is a patriarchal society where men are absolutely dominant, and the purpose of marriage for women is family reproduction and inheritance.

¹⁰ The variable is set to 1 if the spouses met on their own at school, in the workplace, at their place of residence, or in another place. It is set to 0 if they were introduced by relatives, friends, a dating agency, or their parents.

¹¹ In the CFPS data, the proportion of conceptions out of wedlock was reasonably maintained at approximately 1% before 1985. During the past two decades, this proportion has risen to approximately 5%, mainly due to the increase in the ideas of cohabitation and non marriage (shown in the Figure A1). Although it is not illegal to have children out of wedlock, it may cause many problems with, for example, children’s registration and alimony, and it is criticized by society.

Additional information

Funding

The Program for Innovation Research in Central University of Finance and Economics.