The ancient custom of dowry, that is, bride-to-groom marriage payments, remains ubiquitous in many contemporary societies. This paper examines whether dowry impacted household decision making and resource allocation in rural India during 1986-2007. Utilizing variation in firstborn gender and dowry amounts across marriage markets, the paper finds that the prospect of higher dowry payments at the time of a daughter's marriage leads parents to save more in advance. The higher savings are primarily financed through increased paternal labor supply. This implies that people are farsighted; they work and save more today with payoff in the distant future.
Authors
- Collection(s)
- Policy Research Working Papers
- DOI
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-9453
- Published in
- United States of America
- Rights
- CC BY 3.0 IGO
- Rights Holder
- World Bank
- Rights URI
- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo
- URI
- http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34686
- citation
- “Anukriti, S.; Kwon, Sungoh; Prakash, Nishith. 2020. Saving for Dowry : Evidence from Rural India . Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9453. World Bank, Washington, DC. © World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/34686 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”