Household Savings and Marriage Payments: Evidence from Dowry in India

S Anukriti, Sungoh Kwon () and Nishith Prakash
Additional contact information
Sungoh Kwon: University of Connecticut

No 949, Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper examines how traditional marriage market institutions affect households’ financial decisions. We study how bride-to-groom marriage payments, i.e., dowries, influence saving behavior in rural India. Exploiting variation in firstborn gender and heterogeneity in dowry amounts across marriage markets, we find that the prospect of paying higher dowry increases household savings, which are primarily financed through increased paternal labor supply. This is the first paper that highlights this alternative motive for savings in dowry-paying societies. However, we find no impacts of dowry expectations on son-preferring fertility behaviors and investments in girls.

Keywords: Household Savings; Dowry; Marriage Payments; India; Labor Supply; Fertility; Sex Ratio; Child Investments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 J1 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-04-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-gen and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/wp949.pdf main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Household Savings and Marriage Payments: Evidence from Dowry in India (2018)
Working Paper: Household Savings and Marriage Payments: Evidence from Dowry in India (2018)
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:boc:bocoec:949

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill MA 02467 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().