Thesis (MComm)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Despite the importance of studying marriage patterns for a better understanding of colonial life, the subject has received little attention from a purely economic perspective. In his seminal work, European Marriage Patterns in Perspective (1965), J. Hajnal introduces the notion of a European Marriage Pattern (EMP) emerging in the late Middle Ages which became characteristic of Western European society in the early modern period. Hajnal points out several distinct aspects to distinguish Western European marriages from all other societies of the time. While existing literature in this field has typically focussed on the demographic features of marriage patterns, such as the average age of marriage, the share of the population that had never married, and the effects of the EMP on fertility and resulting population growth, little attention has been paid to the underlying mechanisms and causes of the EMP. Using genealogical records to track the ancestry of colonial settlers in South Africa, this study will investigate the evolution of marriage in the Cape Colony. The focus is primarily on the persistence of the EMP and attempt to determine whether it continued to characterise the marriages of European descendents outside of Europe, or whether a distinct marriage pattern emerged in the Cape Colony in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It will explore the effect that such patterns may have historically had on family size, standards of living and life chances for European settlers at the Cape, with an aim to shed new light on the underlying causes of the EMP, by critically evaluating De Moor and van Zanden’s (2010) three hypotheses of the origins of this distinct marriage pattern. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Ten spyte van die bydrae wat ’n studie van huwelikspatrone tot ’n beter begrip van die ekonomiese ontwikkeling en sosiale konteks tydens die koloniale era kan maak, ontvang hierdie onderwerp min aandag vanuit 'n suiwer ekonomiese perspektief. In John Hajnal se bekende publikasie, European Marriage Patterns in Perspective (1965), stel hy die konsep van 'n Europese Huweliks Patroon (EHP) voor. Hierdie patroon het waarskynlik in die laat-Middeleeue verskyn en die Wes-Europese samelewing in die vroeë-moderne tydperk gekenmerk. Hajnal beskryf sekere unieke aspekte wat Wes-Europese huwelike van alle ander samelewings van hierdie tydperk onderskei. Bestaande literatuur oor hierdie onderwerp fokus tipies op die demografiese kenmerke van huwelikspatrone, soos die gemiddelde ouderdom waarop individue trou, die gedeelte van die bevolking wat nooit trou nie en die gevolge wat die EHP op fertiliteit en bevolkingsgroei het. Min aandag is dus aan die onderliggende oorsake van die EHP gegee. Deur gebruik te maak van die Suid-Afrikaanse Geslagregisters is dit moontlik om die herkoms van koloniale setlaars in Suid-Afrika na te spoor. Hierdie studie fokus dus op die ontwikkeling van ’n huwelikspatroon in die Kaapkolonie. Die vraag is of die EHP die huwelike van Europese afstammelinge buite Europa steeds gekenmerk het en of daar ’n ander huwelikspatroon in die agtiende en vroeë-negentiende eeu in die Kaapkolonie na vore gekom het. Die vraag word beantwoord deur ’n kritiese analise van De Moor en van Zanden (2010) se drie hipoteses oor die oorsprong van hierdie eiesoortige huwelikspatroon.

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This dissertation consists of three essays in the field of health economics. The first essay provides the first causal evidence that bargaining power in a relationship shapes pregnancy outcomes and health disparities in the US. A key driver of bargaining power is the availability of potential non incarcerated male partners in the local dating market, which I define at the race by cohort by county level. Because these sex ratios are endogenous, I use a novel instrument that leverages the randomness in sex at birth and the persistence of local demographics to isolate exogenous variation in the relative availability of men. Greater female bargaining power causes better outcomes: fewer out-of-wedlock births, less chlamydia and hypertension among mothers, and fewer infants with APGAR score below the normal level. The marriage market makes a significant contribution to racial disparities in pregnancy health. Specifically, Black women face relatively poor prospects when looking for a partner compared to White women: while there are 102 White men per 100 White women, only 89 Black men are available per 100 Black women. According to my estimates, Black women’s disadvantage accounts for 5-10% of the large racial gap in maternal and neonatal health. The racial difference in male availability is mostly policy-driven, as incarceration accounts for 45% of the gap. A counterfactual policy equalizing county-level incarceration rates for non-violent offenses between Black and White people would prevent 200-700 adverse pregnancy outcomes per year among Black mothers through the bargaining power channel alone. The second essay investigates how reopening hotels and ski facilities in Poland impacted tourism spending, mobility, and COVID-19 outcomes. We used administrative data from a government program that subsidizes travel to show that the policy increased the consumption of tourism services in ski resorts. By leveraging geolocation data from Facebook, we showed that ski resorts experienced a significant influx of tourists, increasing the number of local users by up to 50%. Furthermore, we confirmed an increase in the probability of meetings between pairs of users from distanced locations and users from tourist and non-tourist areas. As the policy impacted travel and gatherings, we then analyzed its effect on the diffusion of COVID-19. We found that counties with ski facilities experienced more infections after the reopening. Moreover, counties strongly connected to the ski resorts during the reopening had more subsequent cases than weakly connected counties. The third essay studies the diffusion of influenza-like illnesses (ILI) through social and economic networks. Using almost two decades of weekly, county-level infection and mortality data from Poland, it studies within and across-counties ILI transmission. Firstly, it evaluates the causal effect of school closures on viral transmission. The results show that closing schools for two weeks decreases the number of within county cases by 30-40%. The decline in infections extends to elderly and pre-school children. In addition, flu-related hospitalizations drop by 7.5%, and mortality related to respiratory diseases among the elderly drops by 3%. Secondly, the paper demonstrates the significant contribution of economic links to diffusion across counties. The disease follows the paths of workers commuting between home and workplace. Together with the structure of the labor mobility networks, these results highlight the central role of regional capitals in sustaining and spreading the virus.

Decisions about marriage and childbearing, and the subsequent interactions between members of a family unit can have important individual and societal impacts on income, well-being, and economic mobility. This is especially true for women in developing countries, given limited female formal labor force participation, the economic significance of marriage markets, and the reliance on kin networks in the absence of formal safety nets. This dissertation consists of three essays that analyze how individuals form families, how those family members interact, and the subsequent impacts on the well-being of the family unit. The first chapter studies the effects of a rapid university expansion on access to education and family formation for women. The second chapter examines the long-term effects of a primary schooling expansion program on the prevalence of child marriage. The final chapter examines the long-term consequences of early life exposure to armed conflict on family formation. In the first essay, I analyze the impact of increased access to higher education on family formation outcomes for women in developing countries. Using a difference-in-differences design that accounts for the staggered nature of university openings, and a combination of household surveys and administrative data, I examine the impact of women’s exposure to a rapid university expansion in Nigeria in the 2000s on three key aspects of the family formation process - the likelihood and timing of first marriage and birth, their spouses’ characteristics, and the quantity and “quality” of any children produced in the marriage. I find that university openings improved years of schooling and educational attainment among school-aged women, and delayed the timing of the first marriage and childbirth of women. Women also had fewer births, and their children were more likely to have better development outcomes. I show suggestive evidence that these outcomes are driven by increased autonomy - women delay sexual activity and are more likely to work, use contraception and have the final say over important decisions. My second essay analyzes the impact of a 1976 universal primary education reform that provided free primary education to all school-aged children in Nigeria on the prevalence of child marriage. Using data from household surveys, I implement a difference-in-difference empirical strategy that exploits variation in exposure to the reform across birth cohorts and localities. I find that women exposed to the reforms acquired more schooling and the probability that women marry before the age of 15 reduces. However, there are no significant effects of exposure to the policy on the overall age of marriage, or the likelihood of marriage before the age of 18 on average. I present evidence on other marriage outcomes - men’s education increases, as does the spousal education gap. Furthermore, women desire and have fewer children, and are also more likely to be engaged in paid work. However, I find no effects on the spousal age gap or the husband’s age. My third and final essay explores the long-term effects of exposure to violent conflict onfamily formation in developing countries. Using a difference-in-differences empirical design that exploits variation in the intensity of war exposure by ethnicity and age, I analyze the long-term impacts of the 1967-1970 Biafran War on the family formation outcomes of men and women who were exposed to the war during their pre-adolescent years. I find that conflict induces men to delay first marriage and first birth, but there are no significant impacts on the timing of these activities for women. Both men and women who are exposed to the war have fewer children, and women also desire fewer children overall. Additionally, women who were exposed to the war have a smaller age difference from their husbands and are less likely to be married to men who have other wives. They are also less likely to experience domestic violence, on average. War exposure has no effect on the education difference between spouses, but women’s educational attainment increases, on average, while that of men decreases. Finally, I find no effects of war exposure on women’s relational empowerment, in terms of their attitudes to domestic violence and intra-household decision-making, but they are less likely to be engaged in paid work. This study contributes new evidence on the long-term impact of armed conflict on family formation in sub-Saharan Africa and shows how these impacts vary by gender and the age and duration of war exposure.

This exploratory study posited that being in an insecure marriage would increase marital conflict and perceived relational aggression when the couple is experiencing economic constraints. The cross-sectional design assessed two groups of marriages: secure and insecure. A structural equation model using multiple group comparison tested the effect of each type of marriage, controlling for husband and wife education, number of children, and length of marriage. Results indicated that husbands who identify as insecure experience greater marital conflict and perceive their spouses to be more psychologically aggressive. There was also evidence of a cross-lag effect indicating husbands' perceived marital conflict positively influences wives' perceptions of greater spousal psychological aggression for insecure couples, but not secure couples. This is the first study to use attachment as a moderating variable in the family stress model. Future research should look to include greater measures of attachment, with a focus on longitudinal designs. Implications are also discussed. / Graduation date: 2013

In this thesis we study the interdependency of individual decisions on work and family, particularly the dynamic interaction of the marriage market and the labor market. My basic idea is that marital status affects individual labor supply decisions, and in turn, labor market condition influences marriage formation and dissolution. While these interactions are evident, the overwhelming majority of research on labor or family economics usually simplifies the individual decision-making by assuming that one of two markets outcomes is given while studying the other one. In the empirical study, endogeneity issues are troublesome, especially under the dynamic setting. My work takes a different approach. I directly model the individual decision-making, which describes how marriage market and labor market interact with each other; and matching with survey data we empirically recover the underlying economic environments that characterize the structure of the marriage market and the labor market. I further examine to what extent my model explains the observed facts. Very few studies have been conducted to explore work and family issues in this direction partly due to its complexity. The structural models, besides the conventional regression, improve our perceptions on how individuals form decisions on work and family, which have far-reaching implications on policy designs and welfare evaluations. In my thesis, I explore all these issues in three steps. In chapter 1, I explain a stylized fact that there exists a positive correlation between rising wage inequality and declining marriage rates. A two-sided matching model is developed to exploit a theoretical channel through which wage inequality affects marriage rates. My model features a steady state equilibrium in which the whole marriage market is divided into groups and only people in the same group will marry each other. Using the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) data from 1970 to 2000, my estimates indicate that a structural change occurs in the U.S. marriage market. The higher matching efficiency and declining elasticity of men suggest that the nowadays marriage market provides more chance to meet and better gender equity, though higher arrival rates also raise the outside options of getting married. Additionally, I find that wage inequality accounts for over 38% of the decline in marriage rate, which is underestimated in Gould (2003). Chapter 2 examines household dynamic labor supply after introducing bargaining between husbands and wives, which has not been thoroughly studied previously in literature. Here bargaining between husbands and wives determines the amount of husbands' earnings that are transferred to wives for their private consumption. A household search model that incorporates the intrahousehold bargaining is developed and estimated using panel data from the year 2001 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). My results show that the portion of household income shared by husbands for private consumption is responsive to their employment status, suggesting the existence of the bargaining between the U.S. couples. My findings also imply that the labor supply of women will increase with higher women wage and lower money transfer from husbands to wives, showing that the income effect dominates for wives. Moreover, the wage frontier of husbands is positively correlated with wives' wages and negatively correlated with husbands' earnings transferred to wives, highlighting that husbands are subject to both the income effect and intra-household bargaining, and their decisions depend on which effect dominates. In the third and the last chapter, I study household unemployment duration. Previously, most studies have addressed the topic of job search at the individual level. This chapter studies job search patterns of married couples and in particular compares couple's unemployment duration given their spousal earnings. A household search model is introduced, which includes the bargaining between husbands and wives. I use the year 2001 panel data Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to estimate the structural model of family decisions. Our findings reveal that there exists a gender asymmetry in job search of the U.S. household: The more husbands earn, the longer wives search for a job; but the more wives earn, the sooner husbands find a job. / text

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 193-206) / This thesis describes a family variation among urban Nigerian couples called a commuter marriage. A commuter marriage in this study is defined as a union between a dual earner/dual career couple where the husband and wife have decided to live apart from each other due to work commitments until such a time as is convenient for them to live continuously together again. This separation is mainly undertaken to improve their financial and career prospects. The study seeks to understand what dynamics are involved in a commuter marriage in Jos, Plateau State. The Life Course Perspective, with a focus on the gendered life course perspective, serves as a theoretical framework for this study. The perspective assumes that families undergoing the same transitions are likely to display the same characteristics which may not be necessarily relevant for all families in the same life stage, while the gendered life course perspective acknowledges the gendered context. At the same time the cultural context of the Nigerian society in terms of family norms are taken into account. An overview of commuter marriages, including characteristics of commuter marriages and non-traditional marriages linked to commuter marriages are provided. The differences between established and adjusting couples were repeatedly underlined. The research has an underlying interpretivist paradigm, therefore a qualitative research methodology was deemed best for the study. A semi-structured interview guide and time diaries were used to obtain data from seventeen participants. It was found that a commuter marriage is costly financially, socially and emotionally. An emphasis on the male provider and the wife as the manager of the resources was highlighted. Commuter couples report that their greatest support system constitute their family members who show the most understanding to their situation. Commuter fathers were generally passionate about their fatherly roles, but had conflicting feelings about balancing work and family, feeling the family is losing out. Generally, commuter couples in this study showed a sincere desire for the commuting relationship not to span an indefinite amount of time. / Sociology / D. Phil. (Sociology)