Bride Price and Female Education

Ashraf, Nava; Bau, Natalie; Nunn, Nathan; Voena, Alessandra

doi:10.3386/w22417

Cited by 76 publications

(108 citation statements)

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“…Another cultural practice that has received considerable attention in recent research is the practice of bride price, which is a transfer of money and/or other valuable assets that is made at marriage from the groom and/or his parents to the bride's parents. The importance of this tradition for female educational investments has recently been studied by Ashraf, Bau, Nunn and Voena (2017). Corno and Voena (2016) and Corno, Hildebrandt and Voena (2017) study the relationship between the practice of bride price, weather shocks, and age of marriage, while Lowes and Nunn (2017) examine the relationship between the value of the bride price that was paid at marriage and the wellbeing of the wife.…”

Section: Illustrations Of the Data A Ethnographic Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ancestral Characteristics of Modern Populations

Giuliano¹,

Nunn²

2018

Economic History of Developing Regions

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte.We construct a database, with global coverage, that provides measures of the cultural and environmental characteristics of the pre-industrial ancestors of the world's current populations. In this paper, we describe the construction of the database, including the underlying data, the procedure to produce the estimates, and the structure of the final data. We then provide illustrations of some of the variation in the data and provide an illustration of how the data can be used. JEL Classification:N00, Z10, Z13

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Section: Illustrations Of the Data A Ethnographic Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ancestral Characteristics of Modern Populations

Giuliano¹,

Nunn²

2018

Economic History of Developing Regions

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“…9 By matching our data based on the ethnic group of the household head with the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock, 1967), a database that provides information on the cultural norms and practices of di↵erent tribes around the world, we found that in all the ethnic groups in our sample the bride price custom is a common practice in marital arrangements. Hence, unlike Ashraf et al (2014), we cannot exploit variation in ethic origin to isolate the e↵ect of bride price on outcomes. Thus, we will rely on our structural model to disentangle the role of bride price from that of the economic costs associated with raising a daughter.…”

Section: [Insert Table 1]mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Tertilt (2005) and Tertilt (2006) study the relationship between polygyny, often associated with bride price, and growth. In a recent paper, Ashraf et al (2014) show that bride price plays an important role in women's educational attainment.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Using data from Western Ghana, Quisumbing et al (2001) explore the impact of matrilineal land tenure institutions on women's rights and the e ciency of cocoa tree resource management. A strand of this literature has focused on marriage practices (e.g., polygyny and patrilocal norms), marriage pay-ments (dowry and bride price), and particularly on their role in development (Rosenzweig and Stark, 1989;Bishai and Grossbard, 2010;Jacoby, 1995;Gaspart and Platteau, 2010;Botticini and Siow, 2003;Ashraf et al, 2014;Bau, 2012). The latter remains a particularly worthwhile yet under-explored topic to study, because marriage payments are large and widespread transfers of wealth that a↵ect households' saving behavior and wealth accumulation (Botticini, 1999).…”

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Selling daughters: age of marriage, income shocks and the bride price tradition

Corno¹,

Voena²

2016

Working Paper Series

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When markets are incomplete, cultural norms may play an important role in shaping economic behavior. In this paper, we explore whether income shocks increase the probability of child marriages in societies that engage in bride price payments -transfers from the groom to the bride's parents at marriage. We develop a simple model in which households are exposed to income volatility and have no access to credit markets. If a daughter marries, the household obtains a bride price and has fewer members to support. In this framework, girls have a higher probability of marrying early when their parents have higher marginal utility of consumption because of adverse income shocks. We test the prediction of the model by exploiting variation in rainfall shocks over a woman's life cycle, using a survey dataset from rural Tanzania. We find that adverse shocks during teenage years increase the probability of early marriages and early fertility among women.⇤ We thank Jérôme Adda, Marcella Alsan, Natalie Bau, Caterina Gennaioli, Veronica Guerrieri, Eliana La Ferrara, Costas Meghir, Claudia Olivetti, Michèle Tertilt, Marcos Vera-Hernandez and participants at the workshops at COSME, Barcelona GSE Summer Forum, SED meetings,"Families and the Macroeconomy" in Mannheim, EDePo, and AEA meetings, and at seminars at Stockholm School of Economics, Bocconi and Queen Mary for helpful comments. We are grateful to Helene Bie Lilleør and Sofya Krutikova for useful discussion on the Kagera Health Development Survey and to Kalle Hirvonen for the clarification regarding weather data. Simone Lenzu and Jorge Rodriguez provided outstanding research assistance. This research was partly funded by a Research Grant from the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago.† Queen Mary, University of London and IFS. Email: l.corno@qmul.ac.uk ‡ The University of Chicago and NBER. Email: avoena@uchicago.edu. 1The relationship is stronger in villages where bride price payments are typically higher. We use these empirical results to estimate the parameters of our model and isolate the role of the bride price custom for consumption smoothing. In counterfactual exercises, we show that parents heavily rely on child marriages and bride price payments to smooth consumption. Without credit markets, bans on these practices are costly for a daughter's parents. However, ensuring access to credit limits parents' cost, making bans more likely to succeed.

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“…In Chile, Kaufmann et al (2013) find that young women entering an elite education programme tend to marry more successful spouses, with various implications in terms of income and fertility. 21 In Indonesia and Zambia, Ashraf et al (2016) show how female education is used by parents as a strategy to increase the bride price on the marriage market. Higher levels of education should therefore be viewed as the result of a strategic decision to strengthen one's position on the marriage market and in future household decisions.…”

Section: Endogenous Outside Optionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intra-household bargaining in poor countries

Baland¹,

Ziparo²

2017

WIDER Working Paper

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This paper is intended to bridge the theoretical literature describing efficient intrahousehold behaviour and the development literature that collects empirical regularities pointing toward the existence of strategic decision-making among spouses. It examines the key elements of the collective model and discusses its relevance to analysing intra-household behaviour in poor countries. It explores the role that risk and uncertainty, information asymmetries, power imbalances, arranged marriages, strategic investment, gender norms, and extended households play in the attainment of efficiency.

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Bride Price and Female Education

Cited by 76 publications

References 54 publications

Ancestral Characteristics of Modern Populations

Ancestral Characteristics of Modern Populations

Selling daughters: age of marriage, income shocks and the bride price tradition

Intra-household bargaining in poor countries

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