The Price of Marriage: Net vs. Gross Flows and the South Asian Dowry Debate

Lena Edlund ()

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2006, vol. 4, issue 2-3, 542-551

Abstract: The rise in dowry payments in India has been taken as evidence that women increasingly are at a disadvantage on the marriage market and must pay for marriage. Moreover, high dowries, it is argued, add to the plight of parents of daughters and have thus contributed to the scarcity of women (brides). However, the logic is curious, and, this paper argues, flawed. The term "dowry" can mean different things, and it may be useful to distinguish between the assets the bride brings at the time of marriage (gross dowry) and those netted against the groom payments (net dowry). The former is what is generally meant by dowry, while the latter is a concept used mainly by economists. I show that there is no evidence of an increase in real net dowries post 1950 in the ICRISAT data set-a data set that has featured prominently in the literature. I take this to suggest that the widespread reports of dowry inflation refer to an increase in gross dowry, a development which may merely reflect greater parental affluence. (JEL: J12, J16) (c) 2006 by the European Economic Association.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1542-4774/issues link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:tpr:jeurec:v:4:y:2006:i:2-3:p:542-551

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the European Economic Association is currently edited by Xavier Vives, George-Marios Angeletos, Orazio P. Attanasio, Fabio Canova and Roberto Perotti

More articles in Journal of the European Economic Association from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().