Description:

Kieu-Trang Nguyen (Northwestern University): "Astrology and Matrimony: The Real Effects of Religious Beliefs about Marriage in Vietnam" (joint work with Edoardo Ciscato and Quoc-Anh Do)

Abstract: This paper investigates the real consequences of a system of unscientific, illogical religious beliefs in Vietnam. They prescribe that the matching of husband and wife can be auspicious or inauspicious depending on the pair of their birth years. First, we estimate a structural model of assortative marriage matching market, and show that such beliefs in marriage fortune matter to people’s marriage matching, as much as 15% of how much the age and education profile matters. Second, based on this model, we derive a control function for selection into marriage to estimate the effect of auspicious matches on household outcomes, free of the selection bias. We find that auspicious matches increase household expenditure and income by about 3%, and reduces school dropouts without changing the number and composition of children. The likely mechanism operates on relatives’ transfers in case of a negative shock: auspicious couples receive much more transfer when, say, the family suffers from a health shock. Third, we discuss how such testable, unscientific beliefs can persist when their refutation depends on actions 2-3 steps off the equilibrium path.