Stud Fam Plann. 2019 Jun;50(2):113-136. doi: 10.1111/sifp.12089. Epub 2019 Apr 3.
This article investigates the household determinants of teen marriage in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam using data from the international Young Lives study tracking a cohort of children from the ages of 8-19 over a 15-year period. First, we offer a descriptive and comparative overview of the prevalence of teen marriage among girls in geographically selected areas of the four countries, together with their sociodemographic determinants. Second, we place a specific focus on the role of gender and sibling sex-composition in shaping the probability of getting married by age 19. Drawing on the significant cross-country heterogeneity in household context, direction of marriage payments, and prevalence of arranged marriage, we test hypotheses relating to the availability of economic resources within the household and cultural norms surrounding the order and timing of marriage. We show that in Ethiopia, India, and Vietnam, presence and number of older sisters in the household are associated with a 30-50 percent lower likelihood of teen marriage, while the association is null in Peru. Also, we show that having a girl as next-youngest sibling does not significantly affect girls' likelihood of experiencing teen marriage, except in Ethiopia. Our results combined support theories of family-level resource constraints over sibling rivalry hypotheses. Our findings enrich and complement existing evidence on the role of sibling sex-composition on adolescent outcomes in low- and middle-income countries.
本文利用国际青年生活研究的数据，对埃塞俄比亚、印度、秘鲁和越南的青少年婚姻的家庭决定因素进行了研究，该研究对一个年龄在 8 至 19 岁的儿童队列进行了为期 15 年的跟踪。首先，我们对四个国家地理上选定地区的女孩中青少年婚姻的流行程度及其社会人口决定因素进行了描述性和比较性概述。其次，我们特别关注性别和兄弟姐妹性别构成在塑造 19 岁前结婚的概率方面的作用。根据家庭背景、婚姻支付方向以及包办婚姻的流行程度在国家间存在显著差异，我们检验了与家庭内经济资源的可获得性以及婚姻顺序和时间的文化规范相关的假设。我们发现，在埃塞俄比亚、印度和越南，家庭中存在的和数量较多的姐姐与青少年婚姻的可能性降低 30-50%有关，而在秘鲁这种关联则不存在。此外，我们还发现，家中有女孩作为次小的兄弟姐妹并不会显著影响女孩经历青少年婚姻的可能性，除了在埃塞俄比亚。我们的综合研究结果支持了家庭层面资源限制理论，而非兄弟姐妹竞争假说。我们的研究结果丰富和补充了关于兄弟姐妹性别构成对中低收入国家青少年结果的作用的现有证据。
