Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/189921 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
School of Economics Discussion Papers No. 1810
Publisher: 
University of Kent, School of Economics, Canterbury
Abstract: 
Traditional gender norms can restrict independent migration by women, thus preventing them from taking advantage of economic opportunities in urban non-agricultural industries. However, women may be able to circumvent such restrictions by using marriage to engage in long-distance migration - if they are wealthy enough to match with the desirable migrating grooms. Guided by a model in which women make marriage and migration decisions jointly, we hypothesize that marriage and labour markets will be inextricably linked by the possibility of marital migration. To test our hypotheses, we use the event of the construction of a major bridge in Bangladesh - which dramatically reduced travel time between the economically deprived north-western region and the industrial belt located around the capital city Dhaka - as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in migration costs. In accordance with our model's predictions, we find that the bridge construction induced marriage-related migration (not economic migration) among rural women, but only for those women coming from families above a poverty threshold.
Subjects: 
migration
marriage markets
female labour force participation
gender norms
JEL: 
J12
J16
J61
O18
R23
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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