Chari and Maertens Nov 2019 Revision final.pdf (312.8 kB)
What's your child worth? An analysis of expected dowry payments in rural India
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 20:38 authored by Annemie MaertensAnnemie Maertens, Amalavoyal ChariAmalavoyal ChariThis paper introduces a new primary dataset on dowry payments in rural India. A novel feature of the data is that in addition to eliciting actual dowry payments, we also asked rural Indian households how much dowry they expected to pay/receive for each of their currently unmarried children. These expectations are presumably the basis of household decision making (as opposed to actual dowries paid and received) with respect to decisions such as human capital investments, saving and consumption, etc. We ?nd that the distribution of dowry forecasts appears to be consistent with the distribution of actual dowry payments, suggesting that dowry perceptions may be quite accurate. Our analysis of dowry forecasts further indicates that (i) Individual-speci?c attributes are signi?cantly more important than household income and wealth in terms of explaining the magnitude of dowry payments, and (ii) bride quality is also a signi?cant determinant of dowry, which provides a corrective to the emphasis on groom quality in the literature.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
World DevelopmentISSN
0305-750XPublisher
ElsevierPublisher URL
External DOI
Volume
130Article number
a104927Department affiliated with
- Economics Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2020-02-18First Open Access (FOA) Date
2022-03-01First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2020-02-17Usage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedKeywords
Licence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC