The largest challenge so you can carrying out empirical studies on dowry ‘s the use up all your otherwise inadequacy of data
dos.2 Complications with current studies
As dowry is legitimately banned inside Asia and you may Bangladesh, someone usually hesitate to reveal exact dowry numbers. The quality question with the dowry regarding the Indian dataset asks about community-oriented dowry. Like, new Asia Person Advancement Survey requires “Generally in your neighborhood to have a household eg your personal, do you know the version of issues that are provided as the merchandise at the time of new daughter’s marriage?” A residential area-situated dowry is not the identical to just one dowry, that’s paid of the bride’s mothers during relationships. As an alternative, the question out-of dowry lets merely a digital respond to, i.elizabeth., whether or not an optimistic number of dowry are repaid (e.g., Questionnaire to your Condition of females and Fertility in both India and you best Shenzhen wives will Pakistan). A binary address, definitely, doesn’t offer much additional information. Typical out-of whether or not a positive dowry amount emerges matches to, that is largely told me of the, cultural, religious, and you may status experiences when you look at the South Asia.
Since the dowry is not legally blocked when you look at the Pakistan, the total amount yourself repaid of the women respondent’s mothers is going to be questioned instead of reservation into the a good Pakistani dataset for instance the Pakistan Rural Domestic Questionnaire. Even when Pakistani interviewees may not intentionally keep hidden real details about dowry methods, the latest questionnaire get however incorporate keep in mind errors as the participants need to remember the fresh dowry number paid because of the its moms and dads previously. Profile 1a plots the fresh new predicted number of real dowry philosophy counted in the Pakistani Rupees within the 2004 onto relationship seasons having fun with investigation regarding this new Pakistan Outlying Household Questionnaire. Once the opinion is the fact actual dowry number are growing, or perhaps display a low-decreasing trend, the newest contour ways the general desire regarding bear in mind mistakes. This means that, the new lengthened the pit between the interviewees’ matrimony therefore the remember time, a lot more likely he could be so you can overestimate brand new dowry count.
Relationships ranging from ladies’ ounts. New range shows this new predicted real level of dowry regressed with the ladies marriage season. This new shaded urban area shows 95% believe period of predict amount of dowry. The data resources of (a) and you will (b) is Pakistan Outlying House Survey 2004, as well as the outlying family survey used by publisher in the 2013, correspondingly
step 3 Research
On the best of the degree, studies gathered in this study could be the first to adopt clearly a general tendency to overestimate an amount paid extended before. Similar to the services regarding in earlier times accumulated investigation, ours are retrospective; but not, according to that it interest, i such as for example observed specific services to attenuate questionnaire recall mistakes. Such, i requested the amount of each other society-founded dowry (non-retrospective) and personal dowry count reduced during the newest respondent’s marriage (retrospective). Because the Pakistani dowry contains silver/jewelry, gowns, furniture, cooking equipment, and the like, we queried dowry number of the goods. If we experienced a respondent’s overestimation of the dowry number, especially in possible regarding a marriage one occurred an excellent number of years back, because dowry was demonstrated, we could and you may performed check these amounts which have those who went to the fresh new ceremony. Thus, the study to the forecast genuine levels of dowry (Fig. 1b) do not reveal people decreasing trend, on the other hand which have men and women stated in the Fig. 1a.
step three.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 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).
