A rich literature has documented the relationship between age at marriage and girls’ health and educational outcomes. The upheaval caused by the pandemic on household decision‐making has been hypothesized to have influenced the age of marriage, but the direction of impact is unclear. On the one hand, the pandemic may have increased the age at marriage if lockdown policies and negative income shocks to families placed a burden on household wealth and the ability to pay for weddings. On the other hand, the age of marriage could have decreased during the pandemic due to school closures that kept girls out of school, parental deaths that encouraged families to expedite weddings, and lower wedding costs because of government mandates to have smaller weddings. Using data from the National Family Health Survey of 2019–2021 of India, we explore how the pandemic impacted age at marriage for women using district and household fixed effects models. After accounting for secular trends in the age of marriage and contingent on the model and specification, we find a significant increase in age at marriage for women who got married during the pandemic by 1.1–1.2 years as compared with those married before the pandemic.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 大流行和女性结婚年龄：来自印度的新证据


大量文献记录了结婚年龄与女孩健康和教育结果之间的关系。据推测，大流行对家庭决策造成的剧变影响了结婚年龄，但影响的方向尚不清楚。一方面，如果封锁政策和对家庭的负收入冲击给家庭财富和支付婚礼费用的能力带来负担，那么大流行可能提高了结婚年龄。另一方面，由于学校停课使女孩失学，父母去世鼓励家庭加快婚礼，以及由于政府要求举办小型婚礼而降低婚礼成本，因此在大流行期间结婚年龄可能会降低。使用 2019-2021 年印度全国家庭健康调查的数据，我们使用地区和家庭固定效应模型探讨了大流行如何影响女性的结婚年龄。在考虑了结婚年龄的长期趋势并取决于模型和规范后，我们发现，与大流行前结婚的女性相比，大流行期间结婚的女性的结婚年龄显着增加了 1.1-1.2 岁。