EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Better than nothing?: dowry in the absence of the legal protection of women's inheritance rights

Momoe Makino

No 537, IDE Discussion Papers from Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO)

Abstract: The practice of dowry is often thought to be the root cause of the unequal treatment of women in India. For women without inheritance rights, however, dowry may function as their only source of protection. Using a nationwide dataset and exploiting a natural experimental situation, this study explores the effects of dowry on women's empowerment in India, a society where women do not have inheritance rights. In such a society, dowry seems to enhance women's status in the marital household. The effects reverse when women have equal inheritance rights as their brothers. Empirical analysis suggests that the outright ban on dowry that ignores the context may not necessarily benefit women.

Keywords: India; Women; Social customs; Property law; Marriage; Dowry; Women’s empowerment; Inheritance rights; Amendment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J16 K11 N35 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in IDE Discussion Paper = IDE Discussion Paper, No. 537. 2015-10-01

Downloads: (external link)
https://ir.ide.go.jp/?action=repository_action_com ... bute_id=22&file_no=1 First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

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:jet:dpaper:dpaper537

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Publication Office, IDE 3-2-2 Wakaba, Mihama-ku, Chiba-shi, Chiba 261-8545 JAPAN
http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Order

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDE Discussion Papers from Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michitaka Imamitsu ().

 
Page updated 2024-11-09
Handle: RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper537