In this frequently asked questions: Why same-sex marriage? Resistance from social conservatives Is there a slippery slope? Legalization strategies Same-sex relations are illegal in much of the region and are punishable by death in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Algeria, Morocco, Oman, Syria, Tunisia and Gaza have laws that explicitly prohibit homosexual acts. In 2018, Lebanese courts set a possible precedent for decriminalization. Israel recognizes same-sex marriages contracted in other countries, but a bill that would have legalized same-sex marriage failed to pass the Knesset, Israel`s legislative assembly, in a vote in 2018. Same-sex couples enjoy civil benefits, including residence permits for partners of Israeli citizens. Although census records are cross-sectional surveys conducted every 10 years, they include information on women from different cohorts. Since the surveys ask retrospective questions about age at first marriage and women have different ages at the time of the survey, a large data set containing time-varying information can be created from cross-sectionals. The three census years are combined to create a dataset on women born between 1920 and 1954. These women were 15 years old between 1935 and 1969, which is the approximate age at which they were at risk of becoming precocious teenage brides. The sample is also limited to U.S.-born women who were between the ages of 20 and 60 at the time of the census.

Data are also limited to the 41 states with data on marriage laws, compulsory schooling, and child labor laws. The findings suggest that the choices women make early in life can have long-term consequences. IV estimates suggest that legal restrictions that prevent early marriage and require high school graduation have the potential to significantly reduce the risk of future poverty for a woman and her family. The implication is that legal restrictions on teens` choices can reduce the external costs imposed on society, and it`s possible that they also prevent some teens from making decisions they`ll later regret. As a final exercise, Table 7 examines the impact of divorce on poverty. I will begin by presenting estimates similar to those in column 4 of Table 1, but with an additional variable indicating whether a woman is currently divorced. The estimated effect is considerable. Currently, divorce is associated with a 21.5% increase in the probability of poverty, an effect similar to the estimated effect of early marriage among adolescents. At this regression, the early marriage coefficient decreases slightly from 26.4% to 23.5% compared to Table 1. Estimate IV in column 2 uses the same specification as Table 4, but also adds the currently divorced variable as an additional control. The resulting IV estimate for adolescent early marriage falls to 26.4% (compared to 30.6% in Table 4).

Another argument put forward by gay rights advocates is that same-sex families, with or without marriage, are already a widespread reality. They point out that we already have same-sex couples living together, some with children. And they ask: Is it not better for them to be legally married to each other, if only for the good and for the sake of the children? In this Q&A: Why against gay marriage? The go-slow approach Child welfare Christian values There are at least two reasons why the estimated effect of adolescent marriage may not be comparable to the effects estimated in the literature for adolescent birth. First, sampling periods vary considerably. Most research on adolescent girls focuses on births in the 1970s or later, as many of these studies used data from the National Longitudinal Youth Survey or the Income Dynamics Panel Study. Instead, I am focusing here on women who were 15 years old between 1935 and 1969. Comparing the two time periods, there are large differences in access to birth control and abortion, social norms, and labor market opportunities for married women and women with children. Birth control became widely used for young single women from the late 1960s and had a major impact on women`s career and marriage decisions (Goldin and Katz 2002). Abortion was also legalized in the early 1970s, first in some states and then nationwide with Roe v. Wade in 1973. To highlight a change in what was socially acceptable over time, consider illegitimacy rates, which fell from 3.9% in 1950 to 10.7% in 1970 and 28.0% in 1990 (Ventura and Bachrach, 2000).

The employment rate of married women also increased dramatically during this period, from 15% in 1940 to over 50% in 1980 and nearly 75% in 1990 (Goldin 2006).