Hundreds of millions of Indian children are too short for their age. In this paper we explore whether early marriage of women in India contributes to this phenomenon. Using India's national health surveys and age at menarche as an instrument, we find that one year earlier mother's marriage...

The economic literature has shown that exogenous transitory shocks affect education by changing the opportunity cost of children. We argue that this is only part of the explanation. When permanent, shocks may change contracts and the organization of labour by eroding the productive structure and...