| Kali Prasad |
Posted
on 25-Apr-01 05:59 PM
The issue of child marriage, dowry, forced arranged relationship are not new to most of us from Nepal but reading two poems recently published in this site, I was forced to think about the whole issue again. Those of you who are majoring in economics may like to read the whole thing, others may give a cursory reading of introduction and conclusion sections of the following two articles I recently come across. This is quite sad when you look at a developing country like ours where marriage is like what Homraj mentioned in his poem. India is one of those extreme cases.
Dowry system has forced lot of poor nepalese family specially towards the southern border of Nepal to commit different kinds of crime against their daughter or daughter in laws. However, in some situation dowry actually increases the welfare of females. I also heard that the bride who brings lot of dowry has some saying/leadership in the family even in our country.
Can any one shed light on these issues?
Cheers,
STUDY SHOWING PROBLEMS OF DOWRY
The Rising Price of Husbands: A Hedonic Analysis of Dowry Increases in Rural India
Vijayendra Rao
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 101, No. 4. (Aug., 1993), pp. 666-677.
Abstract
Dowries in South Asia have steadily risen over the last 40 years and now often amount to over 50 percent of a household's assets. This paper attempts to investigate the reasons behind this increase. It adapts Rosen's implicit market model to the Indian marriage market and tests predictions from the model with data from six villages in South Central India and from the Indian census. It is found that a "marriage squeeze" caused by population growth, resulting in larger younger cohorts and hence a surplus of women in the marriage market, has played a significant role in the rise in dowries.
STUDY SUPPORTING DOWRY:
Dowry and Wife's Welfare: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis
Junsen Zhang, William Chan
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 107, No. 4. (Aug., 1999), pp. 786-808.
Abstract
Becker attributes the existence of marital transfers to inflexibility in the division of joint product within the marriage. If that were the only reason, we would not have observed the coexistence of dowries and bride-prices. This paper offers an alternative analysis. While Becker's interpretation is retained for bride-prices, a dowry is now represented as a premortem bequest by altruistic parents for a daughter. It not only increases the wealth of the new conjugal household but also enhances the bargaining power of the bride in the allocation of output within that household, thereby safe-guarding her welfare. Using micro data from Taiwan, we found that a dowry improves the bride's welfare whereas a bride-price has no effect. These empirical results support the theoretical predictions of the model.
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| Hom Raj |
Posted
on 26-Apr-01 12:35 AM
Thank you Namita, Biswo, and Kali Prasad for the kind remarks on my work. It feels good when Nepalis read my work and like it. I'm glad that Namita spontaneously reflected upon the poem by posting her creative piece. And also, Kali Prasad took it differently, which gave him an impetus to post the abstracts of these two articles. Posting this type of materials is actually very useful since perhaps a lot of people who visit this site are either students or scholars on Nepal-related issues.
It's nice to see that literature has a function and can serve to trigger creative impulses--Namita's with poetry, Biswo's with critique-style comment, Kali Prasad with political economy.
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