This study investigated: (1) whether marital quality influences husbands’ odds of temporary migration (overall), and whether this association varies by 2) migrant destination––internal versus international (destination)––and/or by 3) dimension of marital quality––marital conflict and love for spouse (dimension). How the marital relationship—in particular, husbands’ and wives’ reports of marital conflict and love for spouse—influences the temporary labor migration of married men is unclear. Yet this understudied topic may offer an explanation for why some couples do not (or, do) send a spouse away for work even when it is economically rational. This study used data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study (CVFS), a panel study set in rural Nepal. The analytic sample consisted of all person-months between 1997 and 2008 for married men who, along with their wives, participated in the 1996 baseline interview and were living with their spouses within the sample neighborhoods (N=910; 55,815 person-months). Findings from multinomial event-history models show that husbands in “lower-quality” marriages (i.e., more conflict and less love) are significantly less likely to migrate abroad than are husbands in “higher-quality” marriages, whereas the opposite holds true for migrating internally. These effects are robust to an array of covariates, including couples’ residential circumstances. Marital quality is an over-looked yet critical factor influencing married persons’ likelihood of engaging in temporary labor migration, with important differences across specific dimensions of marital quality and migrant destinations. Results have important implications for policies targeting the well-being of migrants and their families at home.
Marital Quality and Husbands’ Temporary Migration: Evidence from South Asia