Marriage markets and the rise of dowry in India

Gaurav Chiplunkar and Jeffrey Weaver

Journal of Development Economics, 2023, vol. 164, issue C

Abstract: Dowry payments are common in many marriage markets. This paper uses data on over 74,000 marriages in rural India over the last century to explain why the institution of dowry emerges and how it evolves over time. We find that the proportion of Indian marriages including dowry payments doubled between 1930 and 1975, and the average real value of payments tripled. We empirically test whether four prominent theories of dowry can explain this rise, and find support for only one: increased differentiation in groom quality as a result of modernization. We also find a decline in the average real value of dowry payments after 1975 and demonstrate that this could be rationalized within a search model of marriage markets.

Keywords: Dowry; Marriage markets; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 N35 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387823000706
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Marriage Markets and the Rise of Dowry in India (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:164:y:2023:i:c:s0304387823000706

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103115

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().