To the best of our knowledge, data collected in this study are the first to consider explicitly a general tendency to overestimate an amount paid a long time ago. Similar to the characteristics of previously collected data, ours are also retrospective; however, based on this tendency, we particularly adopted certain efforts to minimize survey recall errors. For example, we asked for the amount of both community-based dowry (non-retrospective) and personal dowry amount paid at the time of the respondent’s marriage (retrospective). Since Pakistani dowry consists of gold/jewelry, clothing, furniture, kitchenware, and so on, we queried dowry amounts by item. If we sensed a respondent’s overestimation of the dowry amount, especially in the case of a marriage that took place a long time ago, because dowry is displayed, we could and did check these amounts with those who attended the ceremony. Consequently, our data on predicted real amounts of dowry (Fig. 1b) do not show any decreasing trend, in contrast with those reported in Fig. 1a.
Survey
When conducting our survey between June and October 2013, we intended to capture the heterogeneous aspects of the Punjab province in Pakistan. We divided Punjab (36 districts) into five regions: Pothohar (or North), Central, East, West, and South Punjab. Climate, culture (including marriage/inheritance practices), and socioeconomic conditions differ across regions but are similar within each region. We randomly selected one district from each region, namely, Rawalpindi, Mandi Bahauddin, Narowal, Muzaffargarh, and Bahawalnagar (Fig. 2). We used the district census for 1998–1999, the latest census available in Pakistan as of 2013, to randomly select six villages in rural areas in each of the five districts. We restricted sampling villages to those with a population of at least 1000 at the time of the census. In each village, we selected 22 households, following a stratified random sampling methodology. First, with assistance from the village chief, we made a list of households in the village and categorized them into a stratum. The strata are kammeesFootnote 10 (i.e., traditional service or lower caste, with annual income ≤ PKR 200,000, > PKR 200,000) and zamindars (i.e., landowning farmers with land < 5, 5–12.5, and > 12.5 acres). Eligible households in our survey are defined as those with an economically active husband and wife aged 15–65. Second, we performed stratified random sampling so that the share of each stratum in our sample corresponds to the share of each stratum of the village population (= households).
On the basis of the sampling process explained above, we conducted questionnaire-based structural interviews. Ninety-nine percent of those selected responded to our interviews. The questionnaire was carefully designed to comprehensively understand marriage practices in rural Punjab, Pakistan. The questionnaire consists of two parts; the first contains questions for the husband, and the second has questions for the wife. Because the second part contains sensitive questions to assess the wife’s status in the marital household, we attempted to maintain the wife’s privacy as much as possible, for example, by requesting a separate interview room so that the wife could answer without feeling pressure from her husband.
Marriage practices
The summary statistics of the husband’s and wife’s socioeconomic characteristics, marriage expenses, and wife’s empowerment are presented in Table 1. Column (1) reports the statistics for the full sample, and column (2) reports them for the subsample, i.e., wives who have at least one brother and one sister. The summary statistics for the subsample are reported since one particular reduced-form estimation with a set of marriage expenses paid to the wife’s sisters and brothers by their respective in-laws can only be conducted with the subsample. The average age of husbands is 40.6 years. Husbands, on average, completed primary education (5 years), and 56% of them are literate. The average age of wives is 35.8 years. Wives, on average, did not complete primary education, and only 30% of them are literate. Kammee households account for 27% of total households surveyed. The average size of agricultural land per household is 3.24 acres, with almost 40% of households being landless.Footnote 11 For 39% of the wives, their birth village is the same as that of their husbands, 66% of them are married to a cousin, and 17% are married in watta satta (bride exchange, or literally, “give–take”).Footnote 12 All of these are unique features of marriage in Punjab, Pakistan. In contrast, the northwestern part of India, including Indian Punjab, has been traditionally known for hypergamy, wherein wives are married to husbands of higher status. Hypergamy contrasts with endogamy and cousin marriage. Watta satta is also excluded from hypergamy because two families arranging watta satta cannot technically observe hypergamy at the same time, and they are most likely to be from the same social class and economic condition. Wife’s natal family’s household income at the time of marriage was PKR 171,695Footnote 13 on average. It was answered retrospectively by the wife and is, therefore, likely subject to recall errors similar to those found in the amount of personal dowry and other marriage expenses, although income may be easier for respondents to recall compared with a personal dowry consisting of various items. We adopted similar efforts to minimize survey recall errors.
Table 1 Summary statistics The first part of the questionnaire asks husbands about their marriage practices, including dowry amount. Because dowry is well known to consist of various items that enable a young couple to start their married life immediately after marriage, we asked about the value of each item within the dowry. The actual question is “Generally, in your community, for a family like yours, what is the approximate value of each item given as dowry at the time of the daughter’s marriage?” We explicitly asked about dowry as observed in their community, or jati (= sub-caste), because we are interested in the practice of dowry itself as well as the personal amount of dowry their parents paid. Their answer to the question about dowry in the community is likely to convey precise information about dowry practices. Their reply might report how much they would pay for each item if they are currently in the process of providing a dowry to their daughter. In either case, the answer is likely to provide more precise measures on the itemized value of dowry. Presumably, remembering every single item of their personal dowries from several years ago would be difficult. The second part of the questionnaire asks wives about their personal dowries and other marriage expenses, i.e., “How much dowry (bride price) did your parents (in-laws) provide at the time of your marriage?” These personal amounts are used in the main empirical analysis. The correlation coefficient between the personal dowry amount and community-based dowry amount is 0.65 (Fig. 3). The community-based dowry amount is higher than the personal dowry amount paid by the wives’ parents, which is not surprising given the alleged increasing trend in the real amount of dowry.
Panel B of Table 1 shows the itemized average dowry values generally provided by a daughter’s parents at the time of her marriage. Contrary with our expectation, the amount of cash is not very large, and cash included in a dowry, especially cash given to the groom, seems a token payment, with an average negligible amount of PKR 3759. The average value of gold/jewelry offered to the bride by her parents is the largest among all items, PKR 76,651. Both cash and gold/jewelry are offered by approximately 90% of brides’ parents. Also, somewhat to our surprise, the average value of electronics, furniture, and kitchenware offered to the bride by her parents is high, and these items are offered by an even higher percentage of the brides’ parents (95 to 100%). Although each item has an average value lower than that of gold/jewelry, the average value of furniture, electronics, and kitchenware combined amounts to PKR 136,390—much greater than that of the gifted gold/jewelry. Although we should carefully interpret the amount of gold/jewelry offered to the bride by her parents as gifts to the bride because such items can easily be converted into cash and might be taken by the groom and his parents, items such as furniture, electronics, and kitchenware can be safely interpreted as gifts to the bride by her parents. In India, the groom’s parents are reported as often asking the bride’s parents for dowry to prepare future dowries for their daughters (circulating dowry). However, in rural Pakistani Punjab, the largest share of dowry being furniture/electronics/kitchenware makes it difficult to support the hypothesis of circulating dowry. Looking at items’ values in detail, dowry seems a trousseau voluntarily offered by the bride’s parents to their daughter at the time of her marriage and is at her disposal once in the marital household.
Although dowry expenses incurred by the bride’s parents are notoriously known and, in fact, are the single greatest expense in marriage, the expenses incurred by the groom’s parents are far from negligible. Panel B also shows the average value of marriage expenses generally incurred by both sides. In addition to the ceremony expense,Footnote 14 the groom’s side also bears the cost of gifts to the bride called bari, an indispensable part of the ceremony. Bari typically consists of jewelry and clothing offered to the bride and her female relatives, and it can be considered a customary bride price. These two major marriage expenses incurred by the groom’s side, i.e., the ceremony expense and bari, together are equivalent to the amount of dowry incurred by the bride’s side. This indicates that marriage expenses in Pakistani Punjab are not disproportionally borne by the bride’s parents.
Also, dowry is sometimes partially incurred by the groom’s side. We observed that in some communities, the groom’s side customarily bears 50–60% of the dowry expense. Although groom-side households bearing half the expense of dowry account for only 7% of the sample, and therefore, the average value is only PKR 10,713, this custom is far from negligible because it does not fit into either the price hypothesis or the bequest hypothesis. Under the price model, dowry payment should be one-sided, made by the side gaining from marriage or oversupplied in the marriage market (Zhang and Chan 1999). Under the bequest model, dowry should be paid entirely by the bride’s parents (Botticini and Siow 2003). The fact that the groom’s side bears approximately half the dowry expenses can be consistent with the idea that dowry serves as a resource to help the new couple start their marital life. It also fits into the interpretation of dowry as trousseau, implied by the itemized average value of dowry.
Marriage is a contract for Muslims, and mehr (Islamic bride price), not dowry, is required to conclude the marriage. Mehr consists of two parts: (1) moajel, the immediate transfer at the time of marriage from the groom’s to the bride’s side and (2) non-moajel, a deferred transfer promised for payment at the time of divorce. A substantial amount of mehr is non-moajel, PKR 32,336 on average, though only 17% of those interviewed answer that they generally specify non-moajel in the marriage contract. Moajel is considered to become a token payment in contemporary rural Punjab, Pakistan, and a negligible amount (PKR 7253 on average) is reported.Footnote 15 Because the amount of mehr is written into the marriage contract and is binding, it might enhance women’s status in the marital household because their husbands cannot obtain a no-fault divorce without incurring substantial costs corresponding to the amount of mehr.Footnote 16 We do not find any strong correlation between the practice of writing non-moajel into the marriage contract and household status (whether zamindars or kammees) or household wealth (quality of living and size of land ownership).
We asked wives why the real amount of dowry differed among siblings.Footnote 17 Excluding “emotional attachment” to one daughter and an “upward trend” in dowry amounts, which are less meaningful answers in our study, dowry offered to the bride by her parents tends to be higher when (1) the groom is of higher quality (higher education, higher earning ability), (2) the groom’s family’s status/economic condition is better, (3) the bride’s parents are in a better financial condition (compared with the groom’s family and/or to the time of their other daughters’ marriages), and/or (4) the marriage is arranged out of biradari (literally “brotherhood,” a group of male kin). As determinants of the dowry amount, these factors seem to reinforce the importance of groom quality and the bride’s parents’ financial capacity to pay. The idea that a higher quality groom increases the dowry amount is better explained by the price model, while the idea that the financial capacity of the bride’s parents increases the dowry amount is closer to the bequest model. This seems to indicate that these two major hypotheses about dowry, the price and bequest hypotheses, are not exclusive. To suggest effective policies aimed at improving women’s welfare, examining the relation between dowry and women’s welfare in the given context could be more useful rather than discussing which hypothesis best captures the true nature of dowry.
Measures of women’s status
The questions designed to gauge women’s status/empowerment are all answered by wives and summarized in Panel C of Table 1. The first measure is women’s decision-making power; we asked wives who has the most say in decision making regarding (1) what to cook on a daily basis, (2) whether to buy an expensive item such as a television or refrigerator, (3) how many children to have, (4) what to do if a child falls sick, and (5) whom the children should marry. Each variable for women’s decision making equals one if the wife has the most say in deciding each item and zero otherwise. As expected, the majority of wives, 75 and 63%, have the most say on what to cook and what to do when a child falls sick, respectively. In contrast, only a small fraction of wives, 18, 26, and 26%, make decisions on major household expenses, fertility, and children’s marriages, respectively. We construct the decision-making index by principal component analysis allowing for correlations across decision-making variables (see Gorsuch 2003). The index variable equals the only factor having an eigenvalue greater than one.
The second measure is women’s autonomy; we asked the wife whether she has to ask for her husband’s permission to go to (1) the local health center, (2) the home of relatives/friends in the village, and (3) the neighborhood shop. Each variable for women’s autonomy equals one if the wife does not need to ask permission from her husband and zero otherwise. Wives in Pakistani Punjab seem, on average, to have autonomy. Approximately 70% of wives do not have to ask permission from their husbands to go to the local health center, and approximately 75% of wives can visit their relatives/friends and a neighborhood shop without asking for permission. The reason for their modest autonomy could be partially because of the prevalence of village endogamy, implying that village people are relatives, and the practice of purdahFootnote 18 is relatively relaxed within the village. As in the case of the decision-making index, the autonomy index is constructed using principal component analysis. Figure 4 demonstrates the kernel densities of these two indices.