Bride Price and Female Education
研究学校建设对女孩教育的影响如何因彩礼习俗而异，发现彩礼习俗下父母因女儿教育提高而获得更多彩礼，因此女孩受教育概率更高，且这些家庭对学校建设等政策反应更敏感。
The paper examines how the effects of school construction on girls’ education vary with a widely-practiced marriage custom called bride price, which is a payment made by the husband and/or his family to the wife’s parents at marriage. It began by developing a model of educational choice with and without bride price. The model generates a number of predictions that was tested in two countries that have had large-scale school construction projects, Indonesia and Zambia. Consistent with the model, it was found that for groups that practice the custom of bride price, the value of bride price payments that the parents receive tend to increase with their daughter’s education. As a consequence, the probability of a girl being educated is higher among bride price groups. The model also predicts that families from bride price groups will be the most responsive to policies, like school construction, that are aimed at increasing female education.