Do marriage markets respond to a natural disaster? The impact of flooding of the Kosi river in India

This paper studies the impact of the flooding of the Kosi river on the timing of marriage in the Indian state of Bihar, one of the world’s poorest regions. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that the Kosi floods reduced men’s age at marriage by almost a year and women’s age at marriage by over 4 months. The Kosi floods also decreased the secondary school completion rates of married men and women and married women’s command over economic resources. We interpret these results within a framework of marriage markets, where in the absence of complete credit markets, marriage market payments (dowry) help smooth consumption in response to adverse income shocks. In support of this framework, we find that the impact of the Kosi floods is more pronounced among Hindus (for whom dowry is the traditional marriage payment norm) and among the landless (who are more credit-constrained).