Daughters or dowries? The changing nature of dowry practices in south India

The Missing Link Between Parents’ Preferences and Daughters’ Survival: The Moderator Effect of Societal Discrimination

“…It is worth mentioning that the overall discrimination against females, in economics, is measured traditionally by the labor status of women. However, in some cases, greater female labor participation might fail to reflect greater female status, especially if (as is largely the case in India) they have no control over the outcomes of their work, or if their contribution to household income is undervalued (Mukherjee, 2013;Srinivasan, 2005). Bearing this limitation in mind, Drèze and Sen (2002) support the idea that a comprehensive understanding of the societal discrimination against women should not only account for women's actions, but also for their capacity to act otherwise (e.g., without husbands' permission).…”

Setting the Dowry Optimally to Extract the Full Surplus: A Contract Theory Perspective

“…In addition, the work of Srinivasan (2005) and others clearly tells us that many arranged marriages consummated with dowries have subsequently turned out to be detrimental to the bride. Given these two points, we suppose that the bride's father is risk averse.…”

“…In many arranged marriages in India and in other nations, dowry payments are now largely involuntary. Further, as Leslie (1998) and Srinivasan (2005) have pointed out, such payments are often used by the groom's family to impoverish the bride's family by extracting large amounts of monetary and/or material resources as a precondition for marriage. The groom's family is able to do this because in India and in other countries where arranged marriages are common, women tend to occupy an inferior position in the pertinent nation's patrilineal kinship and family system.…”

“…Specifically, research by Rao (1993), Sharma (1993), Dalmia (2004), Srinivasan (2005), and Peters (2011) yields three findings that are worth emphasizing. First, in many arranged marriage settings, the prospective bride and the prospective groom's families directly negotiate with each other to determine the amount of the dowry.…”

Ethnic differentials in the timing of family formation

“…Marriage is of central importance because of the threat to family and, in particular, to male honour posed by female sexuality and loss of sexual purity (Brenneis 1979;Chandra 2000;Srinivasan 2005). The prohibition of female premarital sexual relations is enforced through early and arranged marriage (Mayer 1973:66;Gupta 1976:4).…”