Trading Off Autonomy: How Girls and Parents Weight Education, Work, and Marriage? Evidence from a Discrete Choice Experiment in Senegal

We study how parents and daughters in Senegal evaluate trade-offs between girls’ education, employment, and marriage timing. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, we design a Discrete Choice Experiment and estimate mixed logit models to capture unobserved taste variations. We find that while girls’ human capital and labor market participation are highly valued, these preferences weaken when the prospective husband is economically advantaged, suggesting a substitution logic. Preferences vary by region, gender,
household structure, and economic vulnerability. The findings reveal that social norms and economic constraints jointly shape aspirations and behaviors. Even when aspirations for education and employment are high, immediate marriage-market opportunities can lead families to deprioritize long-term investments in girls’ autonomy. The paper contributes to understanding how households navigate normative and economic pressures and calls for policies that go beyond supply-side access, addressing the demand-side logic of marriage decisions.