Impact of Cousin Marriage and Watta Satta On Dowry in Rural Punjab

Abstract

Dowry is a common custom widely followed in South Asia and some parts of East Asia. Dowry expenses are a significant financial burden on poorer families. Thus, consanguineous and exchange marriages arethought to be chosen in part to save on dowry costs. Thisthesisjointly looked at the impact of consanguineous marriage, wattasatta (exchange marriage) and marriages that were bothwattasatta and consanguineous on dowry in rural Punjab using data from the Punjab Consanguinity Survey 2009. Instrumental variables were developed for the different marriage types, but the endogeneity tests indicated that the marriage arrangement was not endogenous to the dowry. While results from theTobit and Linear Probability Models show that families of women in wattasatta marriages pay more dowry and are more likely to pay dowry, none of the results were statistically significant.