Quaking Childhoods, Early Wives: The Impacts of forced Displacement on Marriage

While early marriage continues to be a pressing concern, especially in developing countries, there has been a rapid rise in the number of forcibly displaced individuals. This paper sheds light on the relationship between forced displacement and early marriage for stayers and forcibly displaced women. I generate the results by leveraging a unique data set and exploiting the plausibly exogenous occurrence of earthquakes within Indonesian provinces. I show that exposure to earthquakes and their associated earthquake-induced population outflows increase the likelihood of women marrying before the age of 18 by 44% compared to non-exposed young women. The impacts exhibit substantial heterogeneity, with stronger effects observed among earthquake-induced migrant women compared to those who remain in their original communities (stayers). Financial coping strategies, such as marriage payments, increased labour returns upon the husband joining the household, and improved social integration within receiving communities contribute to early marriage among induced migrants, while stayer women lack these incentives.