The biggest challenge in order to carrying out empirical training into dowry is the run out of otherwise inadequacy of information

2.dos Difficulties with established analysis

Because dowry are legitimately blocked from inside the India and you may Bangladesh, some body always think twice to inform you appropriate dowry numbers. The product quality question on the dowry from the Indian dataset requires regarding community-depending dowry. Such as for instance, the fresh Asia Human Development Survey asks “Basically in your neighborhood to possess a family group such as for instance your own personal, do you know the type of items that are provided due to the fact merchandise at the time of the fresh new daughter’s matrimony?” A residential district-founded dowry is not necessarily the same as one dowry, that is reduced because of the bride’s moms and dads during marriage. Rather, issue out of dowry lets simply a digital address, we.elizabeth., no matter if a confident quantity of dowry are paid off (e.grams., Survey to the Standing of women and you will Fertility both in Asia and you will Pakistan). A binary answer, obviously, will not offer much info. The norm of whether or not an optimistic dowry amount emerges corresponds so you can, in fact it is largely informed me from the, ethnic, religious, and you can caste backgrounds when you look at the South China.

Given that dowry isn’t legitimately prohibited during the Pakistan, the quantity directly paid back because of the feminine respondent’s parents will be questioned without scheduling within the a good Pakistani dataset like the Pakistan Outlying Family Survey. latina dating app Though Pakistani interviewees may not purposefully hide correct information regarding dowry techniques, the new questionnaire will get nevertheless incorporate remember errors since participants must remember the fresh new dowry matter paid off of the their parents previously. Contour 1a plots of land the brand new forecast amount of genuine dowry values mentioned into the Pakistani Rupees in the 2004 on to relationships 12 months having fun with data away from the fresh Pakistan Outlying Household Questionnaire. As consensus would be the fact actual dowry numbers try increasing, or at least display a low-decreasing development, brand new profile ways the entire inclination out of keep in mind errors. Simply put, the latest lengthened brand new pit within interviewees‘ matrimony therefore the bear in mind day, the much more likely they are to overestimate this new dowry count.

Relationships between ladies‘ ounts. The latest range shows the newest forecast real amount of dowry regressed on the ladies‘ relationships season. The latest shaded town shows 95% depend on interval of your predicted quantity of dowry. The information sourced elements of (a) and you can (b) are Pakistan Outlying Family Survey 2004, together with outlying family questionnaire held by the creator for the 2013, correspondingly

step three Investigation

Into the best of our very own education, data obtained in this research will be the very first to consider explicitly a broad habit of overestimate an amount paid extended before. Similar to the properties regarding in earlier times gathered investigation, ours are also retrospective; however, considering it tendency, we such as for instance then followed specific services to attenuate survey remember problems. Such as for instance, we required the amount of each other area-situated dowry (non-retrospective) and personal dowry matter paid back during the time of the fresh new respondent’s relationships (retrospective). As Pakistani dowry contains silver/jewellery, outfits, furniture, kitchenware, and so on, i queried dowry wide variety by goods. If we believed an excellent respondent’s overestimation of one’s dowry amount, especially in the way it is of a married relationship you to took place an excellent very long time back, given that dowry are demonstrated, we could and you can did look at this type of number with those who attended the new service. Thus, all of our study on predicted genuine levels of dowry (Fig. 1b) do not let you know people decreasing trend, on the other hand having those stated in Fig. 1a.

step three.step 1 Questionnaire

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).