Political regime and women's marriage outcomes

Abstract

We study the causal impact of theocratic regimes on women's age at first marriage. We leverage spatial variation of the first Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and temporal variation in women's timing of marriage, relative to the establishment of the regime in a difference-in-differences estimation framework. We find that exposure to the Taliban government reduced women's age at first marriage by nearly 9 months, and this is accompanied by a concomitant reduction in age at first birth. Likelihood of experiencing intimate partner violence was also higher among women exposed to the regime. The regime's ban on women accessing education led to lower educational attainment, reinforcing these effects even after its fall. Our results underscore the detrimental consequences of regimes that restrict women's civil rights.