‘Arranged’ Marriage, Co-Residence and Female Schooling: A Model with Evidence from India

Indraneel Dasgupta (), Pushkar Maitra and Diganta Mukherjee ()
Additional contact information
Diganta Mukherjee: Indian Statistical Institute

No 3336, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We model the consequences of parental control over choice of wives for sons, for parental incentives to educate daughters, when the marriage market exhibits competitive dowry payments and altruistic but paternalistic parents benefit from having married sons live with them. By choosing uneducated brides, some parents can prevent costly household partition. Paternalistic self-interest consequently generates low levels of female schooling in the steady state equilibrium. State payments to parents for educating daughters fail to raise female schooling levels. Policies (such as housing subsidies) that promote nuclear families, interventions against early marriages, and state support to couples who marry against parental wishes, are however all likely to improve female schooling. We offer evidence from India consistent with our theoretical analysis.

Keywords: bride price; dowry; arranged marriage; female literacy; stable marriage allocation; marriage markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 D91 J12 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2008-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-dev and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published in: Mukhopadhyay, H. et al. (eds.), Dimensions of Economic Theory and Policy, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2011

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp3336.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: 'Arranged' Marriage, Co-Residence and Female Schooling: a Model with Evidence from India (2006)
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:iza:izadps:dp3336

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().