union. Among women over a quarter (28%) were under 18 y at their first union, and over a fifth (22%) were under 18 y when they first became a parent. For men, the percentages of those under 18y at their first union (6%) and at first parenting (4%) are much lower.

_2) Age at first union and first parenting:_ The mean age of first union (for those who have had a union) for males is 22.1 y and the mean age of first parenting (for those who have had a child) is 23.2 y, with a mean gap of 1.3 y. For females the mean ages are lower – respectively, 19.8 y and 20.3 y – and the mean gap of 0.6 y is smaller.

_3) Age gap with partner and partner characteristics:_ Males tend to be older (by an average of about 3y), have greater schooling (by an average of 0.4-0.8 grades), bring substantially greater assets to the marriage (on average, over five times as much though there is substantial variance),<sup>10</sup> are taller (by an average of about 12 cm), and are likely to be less overweight<sup>11</sup> than their female partners.

_4) Partner’s parental family (“in-laws”) characteristics:_ Males on average form unions with females with larger land holdings (though, again, there is substantial variance) and with about the same or somewhat less schooled parents.

# **<u>Explanatory Variables:</u>**

_1) Early Adolescent Life-Cycle Stage Capital Stocks (Ka):_ The schooling attainment of males (5.3 grades) exceeds the schooling attainment on average of females (4.5 grades).<sup>12</sup> In addition to schooling attainment, we consider an indicator of long-run nutritional and health status, height; males average 162.8 cm and females average 150.5 cm.

_2) Family Background in Early-Adolescent Lifecycle Stage (Fa):_ We represent family background by mother’s and father’s schooling attainments and a constructed socioeconomic status score that is the first principal component of both the assets owned and the housing characteristics of the parental household in 1975 (Maluccio, Murphy and Yount 2005).<sup>13</sup> On average these characteristics do not differ much between males and females.

# **<u>Initial Conditions (C0, E0, I0):</u>**

<u>Community characteristics in childhood (C0): Communities differ significantly in their learning</u> environments, in part because of different experiences of prior generations regarding schooling and occupational structure (Bergeron 1992; Maluccio, _et al_ . 2005b). We control for the permanent, or fixed, dimensions of these differences by including village fixed effects in the first stage regressions.

> 10 Data on physical and financial assets bought to marriage are fairly rare, but some previous studies suggest that these assets may have important impacts on intrahousehold allocations (e.g., Quisumbing and Maluccion 2003, Quisumbing and Hallman 2005).

> 11 BMIs between 25 and 30 generally are characterized as “overweight” and BMIs 30 and above are characterized as “obese.”

> 12 By “schooling attainment” in this study we mean the completed grades of formal schooling, not including training courses that were sometimes taken by sample members, often after they had completed formal schooling for a number of years and were in their twenties.

> 13 In our estimates below we include dummy variables for missing values if these variables are missing but the other relevant variables are not.

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