This research empirically examines the claim of dowry inflation in India and investigates the relationship between dowry inflation and “marriage squeeze.” It also looks at other factors that may contribute to dowry inflation.

1. Revisiting Dowry Inflation in
India
Sonia Dalmia
And
Pareena G. Lawrence

2. Outline
 Objective
 Socio-economic Perspectives on Dowry
Inflation
 Data
 Model
 Results
 Conclusions

3. Objective
 This paper empirically examines the
claim of dowry inflation.
 It investigates the relationship between
dowry inflation and “marriage squeeze.”
 It looks at other factors that may
contribute to dowry inflation.

4. Socio-economic Perspectives
on Dowry Inflation
 The low female to male ratio in India
 One would expect this scarcity of women
would result in women being paid to marry,
that is, brideprice.

5. Figure 1: Gender Ratio in India.
Source: Census of India 1991
0.92
0.93
0.94
0.95
0.96
0.97
0.98
1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991
Year
Females/Males

6. Socio-economic Perspectives
on Dowry Inflation continued
 Marriages in India occur between
females in the 10-19 age group and
males in the 20-29 age group.
 Thus age hypergamy with high rates of
growth of population completely
reverses a female marriage market
advantage.

7. Socio-economic Perspectives
on Dowry Inflation continued
 Surplus of males or “shortage of
women” without age hypergamy
becomes a surplus of females with it.
The demographers hypothesize that this
phenomenon, known as the marriage
squeeze. (Caldwell, Reddy and Caldwell
1983; Rao 1993a, 1993b; Bhat and Halli
1999)

8. Figure 2: Marriageable Age Gender
Ratio, using reconstructed data.
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991
Year
Females(10-19)/Males(20-29)

9. Socio-economic Perspectives
on Dowry Inflation continued
 Is their evidence in favor of dowry
inflation?
 Rao 1993a, 1993b
 Edlund 2000
 Bhat and Halli 1999
 Anderson 2003
 Mandelbaum 1970; Caplan 1984; Billig
1992

10. Socio-economic Perspectives
on Dowry Inflation continued
 Defining Dowry
 Stridhanam or Inheritance
 Ritualistic Gifts
 Cash, given as "marriage payment"
 Coercive
 This is modern dowry called “groomprice”
 Sen 1998, Billig 1992

11. Socio-economic Perspectives
on Dowry Inflation continued
 Our definition of dowry is:
 “groomprice” : monetary transactions
without which the marriage will not occur,
use cash transfers at the time of marriage
as a proxy for groomprice
 For purposes of robustness of our results we
also tested our model with net dowry as our
dependent variable.

12. Data
 Two sources:
 The Indian Census;
 The retrospective household survey conducted by
the National Council of Applied Economic
Research in 1995 for a study titled “Poverty,
Gender Inequality and Reproductive Choice”.
 A total of 1078 households in Uttar Pradesh
(north India) and 800 households in Karnataka
(south India) were surveyed. All rural
households.

13. Data
 For the purpose of our empirical study
only Hindu households where both
spouses responded to the questionnaire
and no relevant data were found to be
missing were selected, which resulted in
a sample size of 460 households in
Uttar Pradesh and 531 households in
Karnataka.

14. Data
 Real Groomprice was calculated
 No Pre-marital income of the bride’s
and groom’s households
 No data on household wealth outside of
landholding.

15. Model
 Groomprice Function:
GP(G,B,R)= GP(G1… Gn,, B1… Bn, R1… Rn)
Where: GP is groom price
G is a vector of groom and his households characteristics
B is a vector of bride and her household characteristics
R is a vector of shifters that are not related to individual or
household traits such as caste/class variations, custom of
exogamy/endogamy, region, marriage squeeze, and the
year of marriage.

16. Model continued
 We use a double-log specification based
on fit and significance to estimate the
hedonic groomprice function:
    

n
i
m
i
k
i
iiiiiii RBLnGLnGpLn
1 1 1
)()()()( 

17. Results
 The results of the hedonic groomprice
function estimation are presented in
Table 2. Two estimations were
conducted, with and without the
marriageable age gender ratio. These
are reported in column 1 and column 2
respectively.

18. Table 2: OLS Estimates of the
Hedonic Groomprice Function
Groom's age at marriage -2.33* -2.254*
Bride's age at marriage 1.022 1.046
Groom's schooling (years) 0.054 0.063
Bride's schooling (years) 0.766* 0.758*
Groom's height (cms) 1.13 1.411
Bride's height (cms) -6.90* -6.73*

19. Table 2: OLS Estimates of the
Hedonic Groomprice Function
Groom's father's landholdings (acres) 0.102** 0.103**
Bride's father's landholdings (acres) 0.086** 0.087**
Uttar Pradesh 2.572* 2.546*
Year of marriage -0.032* -0.042*
Marriageable age gender ratio -2.789

20. Results continued
 The marriage squeeze indicator in Figure 2
suggests that the marriage squeeze against
females has eased rapidly since 1971
 In view of this result, we regress real
groomprice payments on the characteristics
of the brides and grooms over the two
periods 1956-1970 and 1971-1994.
 In doing so we obtain some striking results.
Results are presented in Table 3.

21. Table 3: OLS Estimates of the Hedonic
Groomprice Function over periods
1956-1970 and 1971-1994 continued
Year of marriage Year of marriage Year of marriage Year of marriage
1956-1970 1971-1994 1956-1970 1971-1994
Groom's age at marriage -4.796* -1.27 -4.797* -1.17
Bride's age at marriage 3.049* 0.2818 3.049* 0.319
Groom's schooling (years) -0.155 0.1019 -0.1548 0.093
Bride's schooling (years) 0.5609 0.7945* 0.5607 0.828*
Groom's height (cms) 13.816 -1.828 13.82 -1.51
Bride's height (cms) -0.1898 -8.225* -0.196 -7.352*

22. Table 3: OLS Estimates of the Hedonic
Groomprice Function over periods
1956-1970 and 1971-1994 continued
Year of marriage Year of marriage Year of marriage Year of marriage
1956-1970 1971-1994 1956-1970 1971-1994
Groom's father's landholdings (acres) 0.221** 0.0618 0.2209** 0.0726
Bride's father's landholdings (acres) -0.068 0.1237* -0.068 0.1218*
Uttar Pradesh 2.403* 2.708* 2.402* 2.688*
Year of marriage 0.0358* -0.049* 0.0374* -0.129*
Marriageable age gender ratio -0.067 -10.764*

23. 0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
Year of Marriage
Log(Groomprice)
Figure 4: Time Trend Groomprice

24. Conclusions
 Using a larger and geographically
varied data set, our results indicate that
groomprice has been on the rise in India
until 1970.
 However, for the time period, 1971-
1994, our results show a significant
decrease in the real value of groomprice
over time.

25. Conclusions continued
 We find no evidence to indicate that
“marriage squeeze” plays a positive and
significant role in groomprice inflation
prior to 1970.
 We however, find that easing of the
marriage squeeze against females
since 1971 has put a downward
pressure on groomprice.

26. Conclusions continued
 The year of marriage still influences a
negative effect on real groomprice.
 We find no evidence for the claim that
marriage prices must adjusts
downwards if a women decides to delay
her marriage, we find the opposite to
be the case for marriages conducted in
the 1956-70 period.

27. Conclusions continued
 With respect to Anderson’s (2003) assertion
that marriage prices must adjusts downwards
if a women decides to delay her marriage, we
find the opposite to be the case. Groomprice
increases with the age of bride for marriages
conducted in the 1956-70 period. The impact
of this variable on groomprice was however
was still positive but insignificant in the 1971-
1994 period.

28. Final Words
 Encouraging Results
 Caveat:
 Rural data
 Ideally District or State level data for
marriage squeeze would be more
appropriate
 More studies needed to verify our results