How effective are state-specific marriage laws at restricting the age individuals marry? Other work has examined the effectiveness of compulsory schooling and child labor laws on high school graduation and is not repeated here (see Acemoglu and Angrist 2001; Goldin and Katz 2003; Lleras-Muney 2002; Lochner and Moretti 2004; Margo and Finegan 1996). The combined census samples reveal that restrictive laws are associated with a smaller number of early teen marriages (i.e., marriages occurring before age 16). In states with legal minima of 12–13, 14, 15, and 16+, the percentage of women who are early teen brides is, respectively, 6.5%, 4.3%, 3.5%, and 2.9%.8 Of course, these differences could partly be due to time trends or variation across states with differing laws. In the IV regressions appearing in the next section, these factors will be accounted for.