Glass slippers and glass ceilings: An analysis of marital anticipation and female education

- We model the impact of marital anticipation on female education.
- Given gender wage inequality, marital anticipation discourages wives' education.
- Consensual marriage might be worse for female education than exogenous marriage.
- With consensual marriage, wage increases might further lower housewives' education.

This paper studies how marital anticipation affects female schooling in the presence of gender wage inequality and private benefits of education. Gender wage inequality induces a marital division of labour that creates (i) a marginal disincentive to girls' schooling and (ii) a tradeoff between consumption and education facing females in marriage markets. We show that in the presence of the last effect, an increase in the market wage can have negative consequences for the education of females who specialise in housework.