Abstract
We explore the ability of conditional cash transfer programs to reduce child marriages in the presence of heterogeneous social norms. Contrary to popular belief, we show that strong child marriage norms can sometimes exhibit larger program effects for a given transfer than weak norms. This happens because strong norms result in a large number of households marrying below their preferred age. Transfers allow these households to follow their laissez-faire preferences. We empirically explore this relationship between norms and transfers by combining household data reflecting marriage ages with administrative data on one of the earliest and largest programs to reduce child marriage in North India. Consistent with our theoretical results, we find that regions and households with strong early marriage norms exhibit larger effects. Our paper shows that the ability of modest financial incentives to influence norms depends on the particular configuration of parameters related to norms and laws relative to household preferences. It is not therefore surprising that attempts to aim to change culturally-driven behavior through transfers have had mixed success.
Keywords: social norms, cash transfers, child-marriage, gender
JEL Classification: D04, H53, I38, J12, J16, K36