Marital “Mismatch” from Changes in Women’s Litigant Rights
研究尼日利亚法律改革将刑事审判权归还伊斯兰法庭后，女性诉讼权利减少对婚姻匹配的影响，发现受影响女性更可能嫁给收入较低或年龄较大的男性，且家庭决策参与度下降。
This paper examines the effect of a change in a legal regime to reinstate the adjudication of criminal matters to Islamic courts and documents the effect of the change on the marital matches of women. This change reduces the litigant rights of women in cases of illicit sexual behavior and extramarital relations. Combining three rounds of a nationally representative survey in Nigeria, I show that a woman affected by the legal reform is 29.2 percentage points more likely to be married to a man who earns less than she does and significantly more likely to be married to an older man. Regarding the educational attainment of the spouse, I show that an affected woman is 21.5 percentage points less likely to be married to a spouse who has higher educational attainment. Finally, a woman affected by the reform enforcement is 7.6 percentage points less likely to report that she is involved in any four intrahousehold decisions and less likely to be involved in decision-making about spending her spouse’s earnings. Some of these effects are seen only in nonmatrilineal communities, and changes in the woman’s attitude toward male dominance and outside marriage utility are other channels of effect.