ABSTRACT

This paper examines the impact of a large-scale workfare program, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), on child marriage in India. We use two rounds of data from the District Level Household & Facility Surveys and estimate a difference-in-differences model by comparing changes in child marriage rates between a cohort of young women and a cohort of older women before and after program implementation. We find that NREGS is associated with an increase in the probability of marriage before 18 of 2.7 percentage points, or 10.6%. Our results are similar when using different definitions of child marriage and are also robust to using a hazard model and a model with program intensity at the district level.

摘要

本文研究了大规模的工作福利计划，即全国农村就业保障计划 (NREGS)，对印度童婚的影响。我们使用来自地区级家庭和设施调查的两轮数据，并通过比较计划实施前后一组年轻女性和一组老年女性之间的童婚率变化来估计差异中的差异模型。我们发现 NREGS 与 18 岁之前结婚的概率增加 2.7 个百分点，即 10.6%。当使用不同的童婚定义时，我们的结果是相似的，并且对于在地区级别使用危险模型和具有计划强度的模型也是稳健的。