TY  - JOUR
AU  - Arunachalam,Raj
AU  - Logan,Trevon D.
TI  - On the Heterogeneity of Dowry Motives
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12630
PY  - 2006
Y2  - October 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12630
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12630.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Raj Arunachalam
Department of Economics
University of Michigan
351D Lorch Hall
611 Tappan Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
E-Mail: arunacha@umich.edu

Trevon Logan
The Ohio State University
410 Arps Hall
1945 N. High Street
Columbus, OH 43210
Tel: 614-292-0762
Fax: 614-292-3906
E-Mail: logan.155@osu.edu
AB  - Dowries have been modeled as pre-mortem bequests to daughters or as groom-prices paid to in-laws. These two classes of models yield mutually exclusive predictions, but empirical tests of these predictions have been mixed. We argue that the heterogeneity of findings can be explained by a heterogeneous world--some households use dowries as a bequest and others use dowries as a price. We estimate a model with heterogeneous dowry motives and use the predictions from the competing theories in an exogenous switching regression to place households in the price or bequest regime. Our empirical strategy generates multiple, independent checks on the validity of regime assignment. Using retrospective marriage data from rural Bangladesh, we find robust evidence of heterogeneity in dowry motives in the population; that bequest dowries have declined in prevalence and amount over time; and that bequest households are better off compared to price households on a variety of welfare measures.
ER  -