Determinants of Women's Marriage Decisions in South Africa

Grace Kumchulesi, University of Malawi

This paper investigates the determinants of women's marriage decisions. We use availability of women's jobs to account for the potential endogeneity of women's labour force participation decisions in their marriage decisions. Data were from the nationally representative household surveys. We have given evidence of simultaneity bias when the endogeneity of female labour force participation is ignored in a marriage model. As expected, the estimation results confirm that labour force participation and education have a negative effect on women's marriage decisions. This suggests that women who are economically active and capable are less likely to choose marriage, compared to those women who are economically inactive and incapable. Age was found to have a positive effect on the likelihood of marriage. Also, availability of economically attractive men, which was proxied by sex ratio using employed men, positively increases the likelihood of marriage.