School Characteristics and Marriage Timing

Scott Yabiku, University of Michigan
William G. Axinn, University of Michigan
Dirgha J. Ghimire, University of Michigan
Keith D. Robinson, University of Michigan

One of the most consistent relationships in social demography is the relationship between family behaviors and education. Few studies of family behaviors, however, have examined the school environment in which an individual may have obtained his education, such as the qualifications of teachers, student crowding, and gender composition. School characteristics can determine how an individual is exposed to different aspirations, role models, skills, and ideas. These experiences can be important causal mechanisms that link education to family behaviors. In this paper, we incorporate measures of school characteristics into an analysis of individual marriage timing. We develop a theoretical framework to hypothesize why these concepts are important for domains other than academic achievement or delinquency. We also suggest how these factors can even influence individuals who do not attend schools. We then test our framework in a setting that has marked differences in school characteristics over time: the Chitwan Valley of Nepal.