Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The incidence of child marriage, i.e. marriage before the legal age, is a major problem observed especially for girl children in societies that follow patrilocality. Under-age marriage negatively affects women's health, post-marital agency, and leads to early childbearing that has detrimental effects on offspring. In this study, we analyse whether living in a locality with high crime rate affects the probability of child marriage in India. We hypothesize that parents who live in high-crime localities would marry their daughters off at an early age; however, due to patrilocal residence system, there would be no effect on the marriage of sons. In a patriarchal society, the stigma of sexual violence applies disproportionately on women than men, and it damages the marital prospects of a girl. Therefore, when local crime rate is higher, parents would arrange for their daughter’s marriage at an early age. Using a nationally representative longitudinal data-set, we find support for our hypothesis. We find that crime rates in the locality increases the probability of child marriage and reduces the average age at marriage only for girls. The results remain robust even when we tackle the potential endogeneity of local crime rates. We find that this behaviour affects the human capital of girls as they drop out of school to get married. Low level of education as well as getting married early has negative consequence on future economic participation of women. Thus, our findings also relate to the broader discourse on low labour force participation of women in India.