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Marriage Markets in Bolivia
By Lykke E. Andersen*,
La Paz,
31
March 2008.
If people
married each other more randomly, poverty levels would be
considerably lower than they are now. If we abandoned all
current family arrangements and randomly grouped all Bolivians
into new families of 5 persons, poverty levels would fall by
about 15 percentage points (from the current level of 55% of all
households to about 40% of all households). The G ini
coefficient measuring inequality would also fall from about 0.70
to 0.55 (1).
But Bolivians do
not mix much in marriage. The correlation between partners '
education levels is extremely high at about 0.77, with no signs
of falling (2). For comparison, the
corresponding number for Germany is 0.52 and for Britain it is
0.41 (3).
But not all
Bolivians are equally restricted in their marriage choices. In
the department of Santa Cruz the correlation is only 0.69 while
in Poto si
it is 0.82, with a corresponding difference in poverty rates
(see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Relationship between marital sorting and poverty,
Bolivian departments, 2005.
Source: Author’s calculation based on MECOVI 2005. |
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Why such differences?
My first guess was that in the warm regions, where people are
more scantily clad, people marry more based on good looks than
on education levels, whereas in the highlands, people are so
covered in clothing that looks matter little, and you have to
choose based on some other criteria.
But I think a better explanation is probably urbanization rates.
In rural areas, young people tend to marry one of the neighbors’
kids, which would likely have pretty much the same level of
education. In urban areas, on the other hand, the pool of
potential partners is vastly larger, and the likelihood
of education differentials is larger. There is certainly a very
strong negative correlation (-0.61) between marital sorting and
urbanization rates (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Relationship between marital sorting and poverty,
Bolivian departments, 2005.
Source:
Author’s calculation based on MECOVI 2005, and the 2001 Census.
Thus, yet another
mechanism through which urbanization reduces poverty.
(*) Director, Institute for Advanced Development Studies, La
Paz, Bolivia. The author happily receives comments at the
following e-mail:
landersen@inesad.edu.bo.
(1)
Based on results from a counterfactual microsimulation with data
from the 2005 MECOVI household survey.
(2) Author’s calculation based on the 6
latest MECOVI household surveys.
(3)
Ermicsh, J., M. Francesconi & T. Siedler (2006)
“Intergenerational Mobility and Marital Sorting.” The
Economic Journal, 116: 659-679.
Ó
Institute for Advanced Development Studies 2006.
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