The effects of a negative economic shock on male marriage in the West Bank

Rev Econ Household (2023) 21:789–814 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-022-09615-9 The effects of a negative economic shock on male marriage in the West Bank Amr Ragab1 Ayhab F. Saad ● 2 1234567890();,: Received: 6 February 2021 / Accepted: 10 June 2022 / Published online: 28 June 2022 © The Author(s) 2022 Abstract This study examines how a large negative economic shock impacts marriage rates for young men in the West Bank. Utilizing data from before and after the sudden and abrupt closure of the Israeli labor market for Palestinian commuters from the West Bank in 2001, our empirical design employs a difference-in-difference strategy and uses the variations in localities’ exposure to the Israeli labor market before the shock. The closure reduced the employment and income of adult men asymmetrically across localities. Our findings show that the closure caused a reduction in marriage rates among young men aged 19 to 29 years, as post-shock changes in marriage rates. Our results suggest that the adverse effect of the economic shock on male marriage is mediated through a combination of rising youth unemployment and rigid expectations about marriage costs. Keywords Male marriage Economic shock Labor market Second Intifada West Bank ● ● ● ● 1 Introduction This study examines the effect of the closure of the Israeli labor market for Palestinian workers (commuters) on marriage rates among young men in the West Bank of the occupied Palestinian territory (simply “the West Bank” hereafter). This is an important issue, as recent studies have pointed out the role of social norms in mediating and determining the direct impact that economic shocks have on marriage rates (Asadullah & Wahhaj, 2019; Corno et al., 2020; Loughran & Zissimopoulos, 2009; Oppenheimer et al., 1997; Rotz, 2016). More importantly, marriage decisions, particularly at young ages, have profound economic and social implications for * Ayhab F. Saad 1 Nile University, 26th of July Corridor, Giza, Egypt 2 Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Al Tarfa Street, Zone 70, Doha, Qatar 790 A. Ragab, A. F. Saad society as a whole (Asadullah & Wahhaj, 2019; Field & Ambrus, 2008). An evidence-based understanding of the effect of economic shocks on patterns of male marriage in the context of Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East region, which is characterized by traditional marriage customs, is necessary to shed light on the connections between the economic changes and the social dynamics. The effect on male marriage of negative aggregate economic shock stemming from the closure is complex in our setting. Commuter jobs are a major source of employment that benefits young male workers (women represent less than one percent of commuters and are therefore not impacted directly by the labor market closure). On the one hand, young unmarried men, who are expected to shoulder the cost of marriage, might be unable to afford the high cost of marriage and might thus decide to postpone the decision to marry. On the other hand, the bride’s father (or other male providers in the family) face the same economic shock and might be even more eager to “marry off” their daughters in order to reduce household expenses. Put differently, faced with a community-wide economic crisis and tight budget constraint, a bride’s family might be willing to accept a lower bride price and less lavish wedding ceremonies in order to hasten marriage and to reduce its household size. The relative strength of these two potential but opposing forces depends on numerous factors, including cultural influences such as religious practices and social norms and expectations. For example, both the groom’s and the bride’s families could be reluctant to change customary practices related to marriage costs, especially the wedding ceremony, which reinforce their social status in their respective communities and publicly show respect to the bride’s family. This makes marriage costs, which at times can be excessive, rigid and stubborn to economic pressures. We find that marriage rates for men aged 19 to 29 years, defined as the proportion of married men in the specified group age, declined in the West Bank following the abrupt closure of the Israeli labor market in 2001 to Palestinian commuters. Our empirical strategy relies on the variations in locality exposure to the Israeli labor market before the closure, measured by the locality share of male commuters in total male employment, as in (Saad & Fallah, 2020). We use a difference in difference (DiD) strategy to compare marriage rates for young men across localities before and after the shock. We find that the effect of the closure is large and highly significant. One standard deviation increase in locality exposure reduced the marriage rate by 10 percent relative to the mean marriage rate in the base year. Our results are robust to many sensitivity analyses including: dropping localities with high conflict intensity in order to mitigate the concern that our results might be driven by violence; using a binary treatment variable instead of the commuting share; limiting the sample to young men living with their parents in order to address concerns related to internal migration; and controlling for time-varying locality variables. We argue that rising male unemployment rates in communities affected by the closure led to a decline in marriage. We show that the unemployment rate among young men increased more in hard-hit localities than in less-exposed localities after the shock. That is, localities that had higher exposure to the shock experienced steeper declines in employment rates and suffered a more-severe decline in marriage rates after the outbreak of the Second Intifada. Additionally, we observe male unemployment and marriage rate trends converging across localities after the relaxation of mobility restrictions in 2006. The effects of a negative economic shock on male marriage in the West Bank 791 Our analysis demonstrates the different impacts of the closure across age and education groups, with young (19 to 24 years) and less-educated men being affected most. This heterogeneous impact analysis further strengthens our identification, as the shock had an asymmetrical effect not only across localities but also across age and education groups. Commuters affected by the shock tended to be predominantly young and unskilled, compared to non-commuters, who had a higher age and skills profile. The results of the triple-difference model confirm our heterogeneous effect analysis by comparing male marriage rates within localities across educational groups over time. It is important to mention that our paper does not directly examine the effect of the closure on marriage decisions for young women in the West Bank. The effect of the closure on marriage for women aged 19 to 29 years might be qualitatively different from its effect on male marriage. The female marriage rate is nearly twice as large as male marriage rates for t (...truncated)