She Could or She Didn't? A Revisionist Analysis of the Failure of the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856

Indraneel Dasgupta () and Diganta Mukherjee

Discussion Papers from University of Nottingham, CREDIT

Abstract: Under pressure from a progressive social movement, the British government in Bengal passed the (Hindu) Widow Remarriage Act in 1856. Yet few such remarriages subsequently occurred. Standard explanations for this failure rest on demand side arguments – few contemporary men were enlightened enough to wish to marry widows. We question this hypothesis. Using Census data from 1881, we argue that far too many contemporary men were single for it to be plausible. We advance a supply-side hypothesis instead – far too many men wished to marry widows for predatory reasons. This made it rational for widows (or their parents) to withdraw from the marriage market. Thus, the marriage market failed to implement feasible welfare gains from remarriage due to problems of informational asymmetry. We formalize our argument in terms of asimple model of adverse selection.

Keywords: Widow Remarriage; Dowry; Polygamy. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/credit/documents/papers/06-01.pdf (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:not:notcre:06/01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Nottingham, CREDIT School of Economics University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hilary Hughes ().