The most significant test to help you carrying out empirical training on dowry ‘s the run out of otherwise inadequacy of data

2.2 Problems with present research

Just like the dowry is lawfully banned when you look at the India and Bangladesh, some body usually hesitate to let you know appropriate dowry quantity. The product quality question to the dowry regarding Indian dataset requires on the community-oriented dowry. Instance, new India Human Creativity Questionnaire asks “Fundamentally in the region to possess children for example your, which are the sort of items that are offered because gift ideas during the time of brand new daughter’s relationships?” A community-mainly based dowry is not the same as just one dowry, Svensk brudeomkostninger that is paid because of the bride’s parents at the time of relationships. Rather, practical question out of dowry allows merely a binary respond to, i.elizabeth., even in the event a confident level of dowry is paid back (elizabeth.g., Survey on the Position of women and you may Virility in Asia and you can Pakistan). A digital address, obviously, cannot bring far more details. Typical from if a positive dowry count emerges corresponds so you can, which is largely explained because of the, ethnic, spiritual, and you can status backgrounds in the Southern area Asia.

Once the dowry isn’t legally blocked in Pakistan, the quantity physically paid back from the female respondent’s moms and dads are questioned in place of reservation from inside the an effective Pakistani dataset like the Pakistan Rural Home Survey. Even if Pakistani interviewees will most likely not purposefully conceal genuine details about dowry practices, brand new survey can get nevertheless contain remember mistakes given that participants need bear in mind the dowry matter paid off by its mothers previously. Contour 1a plots the brand new forecast amount of real dowry viewpoints measured within the Pakistani Rupees when you look at the 2004 on to relationships season playing with data out of the latest Pakistan Outlying Domestic Survey. As consensus is the fact genuine dowry wide variety is broadening, or at least exhibit a low-declining development, the latest profile ways all round tendency off recall errors. This means, new extended the fresh new gap between the interviewees’ marriage while the recall go out, the much more likely they are so you can overestimate the fresh dowry count.

Relationship between ladies ounts. The fresh range suggests the latest predict actual number of dowry regressed to the women’s marriage year. The newest shady urban area reveals 95% count on period of forecast number of dowry. The information resources of (a) and (b) is actually Pakistan Rural Family Questionnaire 2004, and outlying family questionnaire used by the writer inside 2013, correspondingly

3 Study

For the better of our very own degree, studies collected within this analysis are definitely the earliest to adopt explicitly a standard tendency to overestimate a cost paid down lengthy back. Just like the properties out of previously collected research, ours also are retrospective; but not, centered on this inclination, we like then followed specific operate to attenuate survey bear in mind mistakes. Such, we wanted the degree of one another neighborhood-centered dowry (non-retrospective) and private dowry number paid off at the time of the newest respondent’s relationship (retrospective). Given that Pakistani dowry include silver/jewelry, attire, seats, cooking utensils, and so on, we queried dowry quantity from the goods. Whenever we experienced a great respondent’s overestimation of dowry matter, especially in the outcome from a marriage one to happened a good very long time before, since dowry are exhibited, we are able to and you may performed evaluate this type of amounts that have those who went to the new ceremony. For that reason, our very own study towards predict real quantities of dowry (Fig. 1b) don’t tell you people decreasing development, in contrast having people said in Fig. 1a.

3.1 Survey

When conducting our survey between , 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 kammees Footnote 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,>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).