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Marriage, Work and Migration: The Role of Infrastructure Development and Gender Norms

Author

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  • Amrit Amirapu
  • M Niaz Asadullah
  • Zaki Wahhaj

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Amrit Amirapu & M Niaz Asadullah & Zaki Wahhaj, 2018. "Marriage, Work and Migration: The Role of Infrastructure Development and Gender Norms," Studies in Economics 1810, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    • Handle: RePEc:ukc:ukcedp:1810
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Mohammad Niaz Asadullah & Zaki Wahhaj, 2019. "Female Seclusion from Paid Work: A Social Norm or Cultural Preference?," Working Papers ECARES 2019-10, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    migration; marriage markets; female labour force participation; gender norms;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

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