Bride Abduction in Kyrgyzstan: social rationale and personal consequences

Bride abduction in Kyrgyzstan
Social Rationale and Personal Consequences
Charles M. Becker 1 Joshua Jacobs 1 Susan Steiner 2
1Duke University
2Leibniz Universit¨at Hannover
December 2016
Becker, Jacobs, Steiner Bride abduction in Kyrgyzstan December 2016 1 / 25

Background: Forced marriages
Economists addressed many questions about love marriages and
arranged marriages (Weiss 1997; Fafchamps and Quisumbing 2008).
The economic literature on forced marriages is very thin and their
consequences are understudied.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (2006) defines forced
marriage “where one or both parties are coerced into marriage against
their will and under duress.”
Another UN definition (2007): “marriage imposed on a woman not by
explicit force, but by subjecting her to relentless pressure and/or
manipulation, often by telling her that her refusal of a suitor will harm
her family’s standing in the community, can also be understood as
forced.”

Background: Kyrgyzstan
Anthropologists extensively studied the practice of bride abduction
and it disappeared in most countries with the development of modern
laws and social norms (Stross 1974; McLaren 2001)
Historically, Kyrgyz people are traditional nomads with a herding
culture. The traditional role of a woman was a housekeeper (Abazov
2004)
Under Soviet rule, laws were established in the 1920s that banned
forced marriages. Women were generally well-integrated into the
labor force and public life. Kyrgyzstan had Central Asia’s ﬁrst female
president in 2010.

Background: Ala kachuu
In Kyrgyzstan, “ala kachuu” is the traditional practice of abducting a
woman to marry her. The term ala kachuu in the Kyrgyz language
literally means “to take and run away.”
There are different forms of ala kachuu; it ranges from elopement to
violent non-consensual kidnapping. According to the Historical
Dictionary of Kyrgyzstan, non-consensual kidnapping is described as a
young man kidnapping a young woman when he cannot either win her
affection or cannot find an appropriate bride until a certain age
(Abazov 2004).
This practice is a complex social and cultural phenomenon; it is also
illegal.

Background: Ala kachuu statistics
No oﬃcial reliable data on the number of kidnappings that occur
each year: up to a third of all ethnic Kyrgyz women may have gotten
married through the process of non-consensual kidnapping (Kleinbach
2003). Several sources indicate that approximately 15,000 girls are
kidnapped and forced into marriage anually.
According to a single village survey conducted in 2004, 80 percent of
Kyrgyz marriages were the result of ala kachuu, and 57 percent of
these marriages were non-consensual (Kleinbach et al. 2005). They
suggest there is an increase over the last 40-50 years.
According to the 2011-2012 nationally representative survey collected
on men and women in Kyrgyzstan, one-third of marriages were the
result of kidnappings among Kyrgyz; half of these marriages were of a
forced nature (Agadjanian and Nedoluzhko 2013). They suggest there
is a decline since the collapse of the USSR.

Conceptual Framework
Kidnapping is socially harmful for young women. Once a woman is
kidnapped by force, it imposes high psychological, emotional and
physical costs.
She cannot choose the timing of fertility and the number of children.
The psychological stress and anxeity during gestation can result in
poor pregnancy outcomes. Low birth weight imposes substantial costs
on society (Almond et al., 2005; Currie et al., 1999). It is an
important public health concern.
Mansour et al. (2012) discuss four factors associated with low birth
weight: psychological stress, physical exertion, prenatal care and
malnutrition. They ﬁnd positive associations between fatalities 9–6
months before birth caused by Israeli security forces and low birth
weight. They argue that psychological stress is a plausible mechanism.

Stylized facts from Kyrgyz bride abduction
Bride abduction is harmful
Kidnappers and non-abductors are very similar
No strong separation by SES
Reasonable separation by age
Only very elite safe from abduction
Bride prices high, women get education, work
Big Question:
Why does Kyrgyz society allow (not punish) men to abduct women for
marriage, despite evidence of harm?
Hypothesis:
1 Kidnapping threatened by family to induce early marriage
2 Individual abductions are a result of search failure
3 Parents less patient than sons

Data
We use data from Kyrgyzstan. “Life in Kyrgyzstan” survey (LiK)
collected anually (2010-2012) by the German Institute for Economic
Research (DIW Berlin) in collaboration with partners in Berlin and
Bishkek (funded by Volkswagen Foundation)
LiK is a multi-purpose socio-economic panel; data are representative
at the rural/urban, North/South, and national levels (Br¨uck et al.,
2014).
In 2010, 3000 households and 8160 adult individuals interviewed. In
2011, 2863 households and 8066 adult individuals re-interviewed in
120 communities.
We use the 2011 (Wave 2) data; it includes information on children.
Children’s birth weight was recorded based on their mother’s recall
Currently we do not explicitly distinguish consensual vs.
non-consensual kidnapped marriages. Non-kidnapped marriages
include love and arranged marriages.

Descriptive Statistics
We restrict our sample to rural Kyrgyz women between the ages of 18
and 59
308 women (22%) reported that they got married through the process
of kidnapping. Out of that, 8% are currently married, 11% divorced
and 9% widowed.
1077 women were not kidnapped. Out of that, 90% are currently
married, 5% divorced and another 5% widowed.
The mean age gap at ﬁrst marriage is higher among kidnapped
couples
Kidnapped women obtain less education on average
Kidnapped women are more likely to live in mountain and sparse areas
Kidnapped mothers have more children on average
Children of kidnapped women have lower birth weights on average
Kidnapped women’s self-assessment of life satisfaction is lower on
average

Modeling search
Men have linear utility over the “quality,” q, of women they marry
“Quality” encompasses, SES, idiosyncratic preferences, beauty,
personality. . .
Discount future at rate δ
Get payoﬀ of 0 from being unmarried, q in any period they are
married in perpetuity
Bride prices, other payoﬀs annuitized into q
Meet one woman per period, drawn from distribution q ∼ U([0, 1])
Can choose to marry or not marry any woman he meets (love or
arranged marriage)
Can keep searching until period T; ages out of marriage market

Solution to the search problem
Men must choose when to keep searching and when to marry
Optimal strategy conditional on time (how long until age out) and
quality of potential bride
Chooses cutoﬀ strategy ¯q1, ¯q2, . . . , ¯qT−1
At t, marries any woman with q ≥ ¯qt

Modeling abduction
Parents may choose to force an unmarried man to abduct a woman at
a pre-announced time T ≤ T
Kidnapping gives men a utility k in each period, beginning at T
Men respond to this possibility of being forced to abduct by changing
their strategy
Parents have same utility as sons, but with discount factor ˆδ
Parents choose T to maximize their utility, knowing how his strategy
will change in response
Non-abduction case is k = 0, T = T

Roadmap
Stage 1: Model tradeoﬀ between time and quality
Stage 2: Endogenize women’s preferences and strategies
Stage 3: Aggregate to many agents

Solution
¯qT−1 = δk (1)
For n ∈ {2, . . . , T − 1},
¯qT−n = δ F (¯qT−n+1) ¯qT−n+1 +
q≥¯qT−n+1
q dF(q) (2)
Deﬁne m(t) to be the probability of marrying at time t:
m(t) = (1 − F (¯qt))
t−1
s=1
F (¯qs) , t < T (3)
m(T) =
T−1
s=1
F (¯qs) (4)

Solution
Then, the expected quality of the bride, expected time of marriage, and
the mother’s expected utility are, respectively:
EQ(T) =
T−1
t=1
m(t)
1 − F (¯qt) q≥¯qt
q dF(q) + m(T)k (5)
EM(T) =
T
t=1
tm(t) (6)
EU(T) =
T−1
t=1
ˆδt−1
1 − ˆδ
m(t)
1 − F (¯qt) q≥¯qt
q dF(q) +
ˆδT−1
1 − ˆδ
m(T)k (7)

Numerical Solution
Qualities uniform on [0, 1]
¯qT−n =
1
2
δ 1 + ¯q2
T−n+1
EU(T) =
T−1
t=1
ˆδt−1
1 − ˆδ
m(t)(1 + ¯qt)
Find arg maxT EU(T) through grid search in δ − k space
Hold externality constant, δ − ˆδ = .05

Abduction Date

Abduction Probability

Expected Quality of Marriage

Expected Time until Marriage

Expected Utility of Mother

Expected Utility of Son

Takeaways
If abduction isn’t very bad, it is best to immediately abduct
Kidnapping is more optimal as agents get more patient
k is left as a black box, but women’s strategic behavior should be
endogenized: waiting for marriage despite abduction risk

Takeaways
Kidnapping is used to overcome high cost of not being married
Acts as a commitment device
Expect to see abduction or similar institutions where delay in
marriage is socially costly
Men may have diﬀerent qualities, behavior may change when
aggregation accounted for
Greater externalities lead to greater prevalence of abduction

Bride Abduction in Kyrgyzstan: social rationale and personal consequences

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