This paper looks at the determinants of secondary school attendance in Bangladesh with a focus on the interaction between community gender norms and relative supply of madrasas (i.e. Islamic schools). We present a theoretical framework where the probability of children's school participation...

Although microfinance started as a movement to improve women's economic wellbeing through increased female entrepreneurship in particular, its impact on women's attitudes toward and participation in the labour market is not fully understood. We fill this gap by combining data on branch locations...

The practice of child marriage is ubiquitous in developing countries, where one in three girls is married before the age of 18. Although most developing countries have a legal minimum age of marriage, in practice marriage age is determined by social norms rather than the law. In this paper, we...

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...

Traditional gender norms can restrict independent migration by women, 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...

We investigate whether female early marriage is a conduit for the transmission of social norms, specifically norms relating to gender roles and rights within the household. We exploit differences in the age of onset of menarche between sisters as an exogenous source of variation in marriage age....

Traditional gender norms can restrict independent migration by women, 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...

Despite significant improvement in female schooling over the last two decades, only a small proportion of women in South Asia are in wage employment. We revisit this puzzle using a nationally representative data set from Bangladesh. Probit regression results show that even after accounting for...

Conditional cash transfers are increasingly being used by policymakers as a strategy to postpone the marriage of adolescent girls in developing countries. While this approach has met with success in the case of education and health programmes, it is unlikely, on its own, to address deeper issues...