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Education and Dowry: An Economic Exploration
Abstract
Rising levels of dowry often seem to be associated with increasing levels of education. In this article, we briefly survey some of the economic theories that have been put forward to explain the emergence, existence and spread of the dowry phenomenon, especially highlighting the role of education. For a more India-specific perspective, we look at the evolution of dowry among the Muslims and Christians of India. In general, it has been found that dowry increases with the level of the groom’s education but is unrelated to that of the bride. Apart from existing theories, we hypothesize about education serving as a signal for the quality of the groom. The idea is that the qualities that help a man earn more education, also make him more attractive in the marriage market and hence, a higher dowry might be a reflection of the price brides are willing to pay for the qualities.
... Higher groom education is often found to be associated with higher dowry; this is because due to the competition among the brides for a particular groom leads to offers of higher and higher prices of dowries [41]. Also, suppose a potential bride's cares about the qualities of the groom like commitment, sincerity, and loyalty which is important for a peaceful marriage, however if these qualities are unobservable and likely to be true, the brides may judge from the groom education as the signal of these qualities [45]. Hence, the bride's family is ready to pay more dowries for a more educated person, not for higher education, but the underlying desirable qualities signals [45]. ...
... Also, suppose a potential bride's cares about the qualities of the groom like commitment, sincerity, and loyalty which is important for a peaceful marriage, however if these qualities are unobservable and likely to be true, the brides may judge from the groom education as the signal of these qualities [45]. Hence, the bride's family is ready to pay more dowries for a more educated person, not for higher education, but the underlying desirable qualities signals [45]. However, our study reveals contrasting results as girl education does not impact reducing the amount of dowry paid. ...
... One possible explanation could be that the brides' education is a good indicator of her household wealth. Hence, higher education and higher dowry are effects of bride's household wealth [45]. Girl having a higher level of education tends to marry at a later age because they are more job aspirants than the lower educated girl [46]. ...
Background
Despite the prohibition by the law in 1961, dowry is widely prevalent in India. Dowry stems from the early concept of ’Stridhana,’ in which gifts were given to the bride by her family to secure some personal wealth for her when she married. However, with the transition of time, the practice of dowry is becoming more common, and the demand for a higher dowry becomes a burden to the bride’s family. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the factors associated with the practice of dowry in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Methods
We utilized information from 5206 married adolescent girls from the Understanding the lives of adolescents and young adults (UDAYA) project survey conducted in two Indian states, namely, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Dowry was the outcome variable of this study. Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to explore the factors associated with dowry payment during the marriage.
Results
The study reveals that dowry is still prevalent in the state of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Also, the proportion of dowry varies by adolescent’s age at marriage, spousal education, and household socioeconomic status. The likelihood of paid dowry was 48 percent significantly less likely (OR: 0.52; CI: 0.44–0.61) among adolescents who knew their husbands before marriage compared to those who do not know their husbands before marriage. Adolescents with age at marriage more than equal to legal age had higher odds to pay dowry (OR: 1.60; CI: 1.14–2.14) than their counterparts. Adolescents with mother’s who had ten and above years of education, the likelihood of dowry was 33 percent less likely (OR: 0.67; CI: 0.45–0.98) than their counterparts. Adolescents belonging to the richest households (OR: 1.48; CI: 1.13–1.93) were more likely to make dowry payments than adolescents belonging to poor households.
Conclusion
Limitation of the dowry prohibition act is one of the causes of continued practices of dowry, but major causes are deeply rooted in the social and cultural customs, which cannot be changed only using laws. Our study suggests that only the socio-economic development of women will not protect her from the dowry system, however higher dowry payment is more likely among women from better socio-economic class.
... Munshi (2014) highlighted that dowry payments were particularly prevalent within the Protestant Christian community of South India. Munshi (2012) had earlier reported that within the Muslim community, the level of dowry increases where there is a shortage of eligible grooms resulting in the pool of prospective brides widening. This in turn means that educational attainment becomes a significant differentiator between men. ...
... This in turn means that educational attainment becomes a significant differentiator between men. The practice of grooms receiving dowries prevails in Muslim, Christian and Hindu communities throughout Southeast Asia (Munshi, 2012(Munshi, , 2014. This differs from the practice of providing dowries in Arab-centric cultures, whereby it is the bride who commands the dowry (Coulson, 2011). ...
... Five of the students questioned (one-fifth of the total), were partially motivated into higher education because they believed that holding a postgraduate degree would increase their chances of securing a better matrimonial offer. This is consistent with Munshi (2012), who had written about educated men commanding larger dowries. Some of these men saw themselves in traditional patriarchal roles, where it is their responsibility to work. ...
Purpose
High levels of absenteeism have been observed amongst male students attending two transnational higher education (TNHE) institutions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). One reason offered is an obligation to attend engagement ceremonies. Many ceremonies are linked to arranged marriages. The purpose of this paper is to contradict assumptions that suggest that higher education reduces arranged marriages, and to highlight that university policies overlook cultural nuances.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 male postgraduate students aged between 22 and 45. Content analysis was used to analyse and interpret the data.
Findings
Several interviewees chose to have an arranged marriage and some saw their postgraduate studies as an opportunity to have a better chance of securing a wife. Equally, several students felt that university policies were unsympathetic to cultural obligations.
Research limitations/implications
This research was restricted to male students from two TNHE institutes in the UAE.
Practical implications
This research provides insight for TNHE managers by providing student-centric research into cultural reasons that prevent student attendance.
Social implications
TNHE is not fully responsive to familial obligations within collective societies. In consequence, there has been a lack of sympathy within policies regarding students’ requirement to fulfil cultural commitments.
Originality/value
The paper explores the challenges of creating culturally sensitive educational policy and practices.
... Economic status is measured in terms of the initial wealth of the bride's and groom's families, as well as the heterogeneity in earning potential between bride and groom. The paper also shows some counterintuitive results, such as an increase in dowry associated with an increase in female education (Munshi, 2012). We demonstrate this in terms of a special corner solution with high female education and high dowry. ...
Using a dynamic framework based on intertemporal optimisation, this paper explores the complexity of the intertwined relationship between dowry and female education. The incidence of dowry in a gendered society is not at all a mechanically biological entity but fundamentally socially nurtured. The effect of social heterogeneity, economic status of the bride and groom family, unemployment, and female-specific education subsidy has been analysed to explain the incidence of dowry. We find that specifically targeted subsidised education for the girl child and gender empowerment may aggravate the incidence of dowry. Interestingly, we found that even if dowry is negatively correlated with bride education initially, a rise in the groom's relative status can result in higher dowry and higher bride education in the final equilibrium. The results of this study show that the equilibrium level of dowry and female education exhibits a non-monotonous relationship which hinges on the nature of the underlying socioeconomic characteristic. However, overhauling the existing social system is not an easy exercise given the stigma associated with dowry exchange, and thus dowry may persist.
... Educated grooms are highly valued and considered to be a good catch. This paradoxically leads to a demand for an increased dowry for the educated and employed bride's family (Dalmia et al., 2007;Munshi, 2012). Dowry practice has not only increased significantly, but it is also now rapidly spreading in areas and communities where it was not prevalent before or where bride price was practised (Agnihotri, 2003;Self and Grabowski, 2009). ...
The prevalence of son preference among different socio-cultural and religious communities in India is an expression of patriarchal culture and values which highlights men’s social dominance and women’s subordinate position within this society. This qualitative study sheds light on how urban middle-class married mothers in the states of Delhi and Haryana, India, view and practice son preference. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 45 urban married, educated middle-class mothers who were recruited through the technique of snowballing. This research finds son preference to be deemed natural and acceptable by the urban middle-class women interviewed during the course of this study because of the various socio-cultural advantages associated with having a son. Old-age support, enhanced social status, women’s social dependency on men are some of the various socio-cultural benefits that participants attributed to the popularity of son preference. However, despite the prevalence of son preference, daughter aversion was not evident among the participants; they provided the same love, care, and education career opportunities to their daughters as they did to their sons. The research concludes that daughters’ social status is gradually improving as social attitudes among the urban middle-class are changing. This article suggests that women’s acceptance of son preference signifies that they have internalised their own gender subordination to the extent that they consider men to be socio-culturally and biologically superior to them. In order to examine this acceptance of gender subordination by women, I have employed Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of symbolic violence and symbolic capital.
Keywords: symbolic violence, dowry, female foeticide, patriarchy, son preference
... Surprisingly, the increase in female literacy rates and increased employment has resulted in a strong demand by the brides' family to fi nd suitable grooms for the young brides. Educated grooms are highly valued and considered to be a good match in the marriage market; 5 this leads to increa sed demands of dowry for the educated and employed bride's family to pay (Dalmia and Lawrence 2005;Munshi 2012). Modernisation (female education and employment) has seen a signifi cant increase in dowry practices; this is now rapidly spreading in those areas and communities where it was not prevalent before or where bride price was practised (Agnihotri 2003;Anderson 2003;Self and Grabowski 2009;Srinivasan and Lee 2004). ...
Article 26 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights is
perceived as an important tool for
women’s empowerment through
which women can break different
sociocultural barriers. But a
qualitative study conducted
among 45 married urban women
in Delhi and Yamuna Nagar
district of Haryana explains how
education is used to maintain the
existing gender hierarchies and
gender division of labour. It
highlights that reproduction and
transformation of social
structures are evident in a
novel manner where ideas of
women’s emancipation and
subordination coexist.
This book is about the prevailing practices of dowry, its mechanisms, and the dowry laws as they exist in India. It argues that the practice of dowry is evolving in the commercialized neoliberal while the law has failed to keep pace with the socioeconomic changes. Dowry, as it is practiced today, involves gruesome forms of economic violence, including extortion, blackmail, and exploitation of women and their families. The current legal framework ignores this triad of oppression consisting of compulsive, arbitrary dowry demands, coercion, and dowry-related violence, and therefore, it suggests rethinking the socio-legal discourse surrounding dowry in India.
The revised version of this book is published by Cambridge Scholar Publishers.
This paper is an attempt to analyse the present pattern of funding higher education in India and to discuss the desirability and feasibility of various alternative methods of funding the same. Higher education in India is basically a state funded sector. But as higher education benefits not only society at large, but also individuals specifically, and as it attracts relatively more privileged sections of the society, there is a rationale for shifting the financial burden to the individual domain from the social domain.
It is argued here that given the resource constraints and equity considerations, financing higher education mostly from the general tax revenue may not be a desirable policy in the long run. Accordingly some of the alternative policy choices are discussed, including financing higher education from the public exchequer, student loans, graduate tax, student fees, and the role of the private sector. Among the available alternatives, it is argued that a discriminatory pricing mechanism would be relatively more efficient and equitable. While given the socioeconomic and political realities, the government has to continue to bear a large responsibility for funding higher education, instead of relying on a single form of funding, efforts should be made to evolve a model of funding that provides a mix of the various methods. It is also argued that fee and subsidy policies need to make distinctions across various layers and forms of higher education.
In contrast to most dowry-oriented societies in which payments have declined with modernization, those in India have undergone significant inflation over the last five decades. This paper explains the difference between these two experiences by focusing on the role played by caste. The theoretical model contrasts caste- and non-caste-based societies: in the former, there exists an inherited component to status (caste) that is independent of wealth, and in the latter, wealth is the primary determinant of status. Modernization is assumed to involve two components: increasing average wealth and increasing wealth dispersion within status (or caste) groups. The paper shows that, in caste-based societies, the increases in wealth dispersion that accompany modernization necessarily lead to increases in dowry payments, whereas in non-caste-based societies, increased dispersion has no real effect on dowry payments and increasing average wealth causes the payments to decline.
Payments between families at the time of marriage have existed throughout the history of most developed countries and are currently pervasive in many areas of the developing world. These payments can be substantial enough to affect the welfare of women and a society's distribution of wealth. Recent estimates document transfers per marriage amounting to four to six times annual household income. This paper first establishes some basic facts about the prevalence and magnitude of marriage payments. It then discusses how such patterns vary across countries depending upon economic conditions, societal structures, institutions, and family characteristics. Marriage payments have evolved within societies over time: in some periods, payments have risen sharply; in some cases, payments have shifted from the grooms’ side to the brides', and vice versa; sometimes, property rights over such payments shift between marrying partners and parental generations. The second part of this paper discusses the economic literature devoted to explaining these facts.
We estimate the effect of education on participation in criminal activity using changes in state compulsory schooling laws over time to account for the endogeneity of schooling decisions. Using Census and FBI data, we find that schooling significantly reduces the probability of incarceration and arrest. NLSY data indicate that our results are caused by changes in criminal behavior and not differences in the probability of arrest or incarceration conditional on crime. We estimate that the social savings from crime reduction associated with high school graduation (for men) is about 14 -26 percent of the private return.
To account for a rise in the demand for family planning in a village in rural south India, the authors posited a triangle: falling demand for family labor among both farmers and agricultural laborers because of declining farm size; increasing demand for education in a situation where schools were more available and a growing labor market offered the possibility of diversifying sources of income; and the high cost of keeping many children in school. A survey of parents' attitudes toward education and of the educational strategies they followed with their children, as well as information from less structured discussions, bore out the hypotheses on reasons for school attendance and on the related costs. Of additional interest was the large proportion of children withdrawn from school, often abruptly, frequently because of prohibitive cost or because the investment in education was perceived to have failed.
The classical notion of dowry as stridhanam-a daughter's wedding settlement-is no longer an adequate descriptive model of marriage payments in contemporary urban India. Nowadays the term refers also, indeed more so, to a typically large cash transfer by the bride's household to that of her prospective spouse. Though widely condemned as 'dowry evil', this practice is spreading, especially among the urban well-to-do. The payment of 'bridegroom price' violates the traditional notion of dowry in two senses. First, it cannot have the connotation of a daughter's portion, since it is alienated from her. Second, the bridegroom's parents, to whom it passes, utilise it to acquire husbands for their own daughters. Bridegroom price thereby enters a 'societal fund', moving among domestic units within a marriage circle in a manner not unlike property in bridewealth systems. Among Christians, only families following caste-specific unions pay bridegroom price; those who marry without regard to caste do not alienate resources in this way, though they settle strdhanam on daughters. Bridegroom price presentations are therefore to be seen not merely as way of defending and enhancing a favourable class position, but as a means of preserving and redefining endogamous boundaries in a heterogeneous urban setting.
With data from 15 Indian states, in this study I demonstrate that political capacity, defined as the ability of government to penetrate society and extract resources, has a more significant--though indirect--effect on fertility behavior than does level of economic development. A path-analysis model with six variables--crude birth rate (the dependent variable), family-planning-program effort, mean female age at marriage, physical-quality-of-life index (PQLI), income per capita, and political capacity--showed a strong indirect effect by the political-capacity measure on fertility decline through both the PQLI and family-planning effort. Within the model, income per capita had little effect on birth rate or any of the intervening variables. The conclusion drawn is that under conditions of economic backwardness as exist in India, it is politics, not economics, that is the primary determinant of fertility patterns.
The discourse on dowry in India has generally been confined to non-Muslim communities, with little research undertaken on dowry among Muslims. This article, based on secondary source material, surveys the practice of dowry among Indian Muslims as it has existed and continues to exist in different forms and in different regions. ‘Dowry’ is an ambiguous word that does not have a uniform or standard definition, and there are wide-ranging regional variations in people's understanding of it. Technically, it is the property of the bride but, in practice, the husband's parents, brothers and sisters have access to it. Indian Muslims commonly use the Arabic word jahez for dowry and, very often, justify the practice in terms of jahez-e-fatimi. Islamists classify jahez into two categories. The first comprises some essential articles for the outfit of the bride as well as for conjugal life. The other is made up of valuable goods, clothes, an amount of money settled on after bargaining, and lavish food and hospitality for the barat. They say the former is a very old and established practice, while the latter is a recent phenomenon among Indian Muslims and mostly prevalent in south India—in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. However, this article takes a contrary view, saying that the practice of jahez has not been voluntary but coercive among Indian Muslims for a long time. It has its origin in the Muslim social structure and the lifestyles of the nobility in north India.
Dowries in most regions of South Asia have steadily become larger over the last 40 years, causing widespread destitution among families with daughters to be married. This paper attempts to investigate the reasons behind dowry ‘inflation’ with data on marriage transactions and other individual and household information from six villages in south-central India, and from the Indian census. It is found that a ‘marriage squeeze’ caused by population growth which resulted in a surplus of younger women in the marriage market, has played an important role in the increase in dowries. Other factors that increase the size of dowries include differences in the landholdings of the parental households, and residence in regions in the more northerly parts of India.
The practice of dowry in India has been theoretically linked to a number of factors including the nature of residence and inheritance system, women's role in production, kinship organizations, relative availability of potential spouses, and social stratification in society. This article empirically examines dowries in India and provides an institutional and economic rationale for the existence and continued prevalence of the system. Using data on marriage transactions and on the personal and family traits of marital partners the article demonstrates that payments of dowry serve to equalize the measurable differences in individual characteristics of the bride's and groom's and their respective households. Thus, dowry qualifies as the "price" paid for a "good match" in the marriage market. Results also reveal that the form of inheritance system, the residence of the bride after marriage, and the gender ratio of marriageable women to men have no effect on the incidence and size of dowry.
We investigate the effects of nonfamily experiences on marital relationships in a setting characterized by high levels of arranged marriage until recently. Drawing on theoretical frameworks for the study of families and social change, we argue that the expansion of opportunities for nonfamily experiences will increase the likelihood of marital relationships based on an emotional bond between husbands and wives. Using data from 3,724 individuals in rural Nepal, we find consistent effects of educational experiences across multiple dimensions of marriage. These effects point toward the spread of education as a stimulus to marriages characterized by higher levels of love and discussions between spouses, and lower levels of conflict and spouse abuse. Results suggest that studies of marital dynamics in non-Western settings provide a fruitful avenue for new research on marriage.
This study presents an analysis of inter-district variations in murder rates in India in 1981. Three significant patterns emerge. First, murder rates in India bear no significant relation with urbanization or poverty. Second, there is a negative association between literacy and criminal violence. Third, murder rates in India are highly correlated with the female-male ratio in the population: districts with higher female-male ratios have lower murder rates. Alternative hypotheses about the causal relationships underlying this connection between sex ratios and murder rates are scrutinized. One plausible explanation is that low female-male ratios and high murder rates are joint symptoms of a patriarchal environment. This study also suggests that gender relations, in general, have a crucial bearing on criminal violence.
This paper considers how state educational policy and other sociocontextual factors influence primary schooling in two large developing countries. In the late 1940s, national statistics for primary school enrolment and other human development indicators were comparable between China and India. Both countries then experienced major political transitions and embraced similar economic development priorities. Half a century later, reports prepared for the 2000 World Education Forum indicate that China had far outperformed India in terms of school enrolment ratios and on indices of the efficiency of primary education. This article considers the reasons for these differences. It discusses the role of the state, educational policy and its implementation, linkages among educational, economic and social policies, cultural belief systems that are relevant to education, classroom teaching and learning, teacher characteristics, and the physical conditions of schools.
The World Bank promotes women's education because it is an input into human capital. In the capabilities approach, education is a force that enables women to have expanded choices. Using data from in-depth interviews conducted in two villages in 1996 and 2000, we examine how rural Bangladeshis perceive women's education and to what extent those perceptions concur with the World Bank's instrumentalist view and with the capabilities approach. Parents educate their daughters because women's education is valued in the marriage market, and marriage is the best way to secure their daughters' well-being. Schooling has also enhanced women's capabilities by increasing their earning potential.
This paper uses data from a retrospective sample survey to develop and test a framework capable of explaining dowry exchange and groom selection in India. It adapts Rosen's implicit market model and finds support for the hypothesized, equalizing differences, role of marital arrangements for uneducated brides in India. The measurable groom characteristics on which price differentials arise empirically include groom's age at marriage, education and height. Consistent with ethnographic evidence, results indicate that dowries are higher in regions more to the north. Most importantly, contrary to popular belief, it is found that holding groom characteristics constant, real dowries have decreased over time. Furthermore, results reveal that the most important determinants of demand for various groom attributes are price of the attribute, bride's traits, and the socio-economic status of the bride's household.
I present in this paper the skeleton of a theory of marriage. The two basic assumptions are that each person tries to do as well as possible and that the "marriage market" is in equilibrium. With the aid of several additional simplifying assumptions, I derive a number of significant implications about behavior in this market. For example, the gain to a man and woman from marrying compared to remaining single is shown to depend positively on their incomes, human capital, and relative difference in wage rates. The theory also implies that men differing in physical capital, education or intelligence (aside from their effects on wage rates), height, race, or many other traits will tend to marry women with like values of these traits, whereas the correlation between mates for wage rates or for traits of men and women that are close substitutes in household production will tend to be negative. The theory does not take the division of output between mates as given, but rather derives it from the nature of the ma...
Dowries of South Asia have steadily risen over the last forty years and now often amount to over 50 percent of a household's assets. This paper attempts to investigate the reasons behind this increase. It adapts Rosen's implicit market model to the Indian marriage market and tests predictions from the model with data from six villages in south central India and from the Indian census. It is found that a 'marriage squeeze' caused by population growth, resulting in larger younger cohorts and hence a surplus of women in the marriage market, has played a significant role in the rise in dowries. Copyright 1993 by University of Chicago Press.
This chapter discusses job market signaling. The term market signaling is not exactly a part of the well-defined, technical vocabulary of the economist. The chapter presents a model in which signaling is implicitly defined and explains its usefulness. In most job markets, the employer is not sure of the productive capabilities of an individual at the time he hires him. The fact that it takes time to learn an individual's productive capabilities means that hiring is an investment decision. On the basis of previous experience in the market, the employer has conditional probability assessments over productive capacity with various combinations of signals and indices. This chapter presents an introduction to Spence's more extensive analysis of market signaling.
When assessing the health benefits of increased education in less developed countries, many researchers have been concerned about the omission of important determinants of an individual's education from the models. The study presented here shows that one should also be concerned about the limitations of the individual-level perspective. According to a multilevel discrete-time hazard model estimated with data from the National Family Health Survey II, the average education of women in a census enumeration area has a strong impact on child mortality, in addition to the effect of the mother's own education. The lower child mortality associated with women's autonomy is taken into account in this estimation. Results from similar models for various health and health-care variables suggest that the effect of community education, like that of individual education, operates through the use of maternity services and other preventive health services, the child's nutrition, and the mother's care for a sick child.
In traditional settings where early marriage and early childbearing persist, decisions about age at marriage are often made by parents, and mothers-in-law tend to have considerable influence in hastening the initiation of childbearing. This study analyzes data from a 2002 survey in six villages in rural Bangladesh to test the hypothesis that daughters of women with more education marry later and that daughters-in-law of more educated women initiate childbearing at a slower rate. Using Cox proportional hazard models, we find significant associations between the educational level of mothers and the age at marriage of their daughters and between the educational level of mothers-in-law and the timing offirst birth among their daughters-in-law, although the association between the former attenuates when controlling for other variables. We also find that these associations do not appear to be mediated by the senior women's level of empowerment. We conclude that in rural Bangladesh there is a significant relationship between female education in one generation and the timing of marriage and childbearing in the next.