Early Marriage and Education Transitions of Female Youth: The Case of Indonesia

I explore the association of early marriage of girls in Indonesia with the probability of passing education transitions using a sequential logit model; I first establish that in Indonesia, due to the socio-cultural and religious environment, marriage is the primary reason for exiting school for the majority of girls married before the age of 18 (and a minority of girls married later). I find that girls who married early are associated with extremely low odds of passing education transitions compared to boys, never married girls and girls who marry later; the estimates are even more unfavourable in the presence of unobserved heterogeneity.