2.dos Difficulties with existing investigation
While the dowry is actually legally blocked inside the India and Bangladesh, someone constantly hesitate to reveal real dowry number. The standard concern on dowry in the Indian dataset requires regarding the community-situated dowry. For example, the latest Asia Person Advancement Questionnaire requires “Essentially in the area to own children such as for instance your, exactly what are the particular things that are provided given that gift suggestions at the time of the new daughter’s matrimony?” A residential district-based dowry is not the identical to a single dowry, that is repaid because of the bride’s moms and dads during the time of marriage. Alternatively, issue off dowry lets just a digital address, we.e., regardless of if a positive amount of dowry is paid (e.grams., Questionnaire with the Condition of females and you will Virility in Asia and you may Pakistan). A binary address, needless to say, doesn’t offer much facts. Standard off if or not a confident dowry count is provided corresponds so you’re able to, that is mostly informed me because of the, ethnic, spiritual, and you can caste experiences when you look at the South Asia.
While the dowry isn’t legitimately blocked in the Pakistan, extent directly paid down of the feminine respondent’s moms and dads is expected as opposed to reservation inside good Pakistani dataset like the Pakistan Outlying Home Questionnaire. Even in the event Pakistani interviewees will most likely not intentionally cover genuine details about dowry means, the brand new survey will get however incorporate keep in mind problems because the participants have to recall the newest dowry count repaid of the their parents several years ago. Profile 1a plots of land the brand new predicted number of actual dowry thinking mentioned within the Pakistani Rupees in 2004 onto relationships year having fun with study regarding new Pakistan Rural Household Survey. Due to the fact opinion is that actual dowry quantity try increasing, or at least display a non-decreasing trend, the figure means the entire interest of recall problems. In other words, the fresh new prolonged the new gap between the interviewees’ marriage and recall day, the much more likely he could be to help you overestimate the brand new dowry matter.
Matchmaking between ladies ounts. The newest line suggests the new predict genuine quantity of dowry regressed to your ladies’ wedding 12 months. The brand new shady town shows 95% believe period of your forecast number of dowry. The information and knowledge sources of (a) and you will (b) was Pakistan Rural Household Survey 2004, plus the outlying house questionnaire held by author within the 2013, correspondingly
step three Data
For the better of our training, investigation obtained in this studies are the first to adopt explicitly a general tendency to overestimate a price paid off extended ago. Just as the services of before accumulated analysis, ours are retrospective; although not, considering that it desire, we such observed certain jobs to attenuate survey keep in mind mistakes. Such as, we wanted the degree of both area-dependent dowry (non-retrospective) and personal dowry number paid during the latest respondent’s wedding (retrospective). Because the Pakistani dowry include gold/jewellery, clothing, chairs, kitchenware, and stuff like that, we queried dowry number by the product. Whenever we felt an excellent respondent’s overestimation of one’s dowry number, particularly in your situation necessary hyperlink regarding a marriage that taken place a few years in the past, due to the fact dowry is actually shown, we could and did look at these number with individuals who went to brand new service. For that reason, our research toward predict genuine amounts of dowry (Fig. 1b) do not show one coming down trend, conversely having those claimed within the Fig. 1a.
3.step one 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).