dos.dos Issues with current research

Since dowry are legitimately blocked in India and Bangladesh, individuals always hesitate to reveal right dowry number. The standard concern on the dowry on Indian dataset asks regarding community-mainly based dowry. Such as for example, the newest Asia Individual Invention Questionnaire asks “Fundamentally in your neighborhood to own a family group particularly your very own, what are sexede New Zealand piger the variety of issues that are supplied because gifts at the time of the latest daughter’s relationship?” A residential district-built dowry is not necessarily the just like one dowry, that is paid back by the bride’s moms and dads during relationship. Rather, the question from dowry allows just a binary respond to, i.elizabeth., regardless of if an optimistic number of dowry is paid down (age.grams., Survey towards the Position of women and you will Fertility in both India and you will Pakistan). A digital answer, however, cannot promote much more information. Typical regarding whether or not a confident dowry count exists corresponds so you’re able to, that’s largely told me of the, cultural, spiritual, and you may caste experiences for the Southern China.

Since the dowry isn’t lawfully prohibited when you look at the Pakistan, extent privately paid back from the women respondent’s parents can be asked instead scheduling inside an effective Pakistani dataset such as the Pakistan Outlying Domestic Survey. Whether or not Pakistani interviewees will most likely not purposefully hide real information on dowry strategies, the brand new survey can get however incorporate keep in mind problems due to the fact respondents need certainly to remember the fresh dowry number paid from the their mothers in the past. Figure 1a plots of land the new forecast number of actual dowry opinions measured inside Pakistani Rupees when you look at the 2004 onto marriage year having fun with research out-of the fresh Pakistan Outlying Domestic Survey. While the opinion would be the fact real dowry wide variety was broadening, or at least display a non-decreasing trend, the latest figure suggests the general tendency out-of recall mistakes. Quite simply, new prolonged new pit between your interviewees’ relationship and remember time, the more likely he or she is in order to overestimate the new dowry number.

Dating between ladies’ ounts. The newest range shows the fresh new forecast real amount of dowry regressed on the ladies wedding seasons. The fresh new shaded town reveals 95% confidence interval of the predict quantity of dowry. The data sourced elements of (a) and you can (b) try Pakistan Rural Domestic Questionnaire 2004, and the outlying home questionnaire presented because of the journalist in 2013, respectively

step 3 Research

With the best of all of our studies, studies accumulated within studies is the earliest to take on clearly a standard habit of overestimate a price paid back extended back. Just as the properties away from before built-up research, ours are retrospective; not, based on it inclination, we such as for instance accompanied specific work to attenuate questionnaire keep in mind mistakes. Such as for example, we requested the amount of both people-dependent dowry (non-retrospective) and personal dowry matter paid back at the time of the respondent’s relationships (retrospective). As the Pakistani dowry consists of gold/accessories, clothes, chairs, kitchenware, and the like, we queried dowry number because of the goods. Whenever we considered a good respondent’s overestimation of one’s dowry amount, particularly in the truth out-of a married relationship one took place a beneficial long time back, since dowry was presented, we can and you may did view this type of amounts that have people who attended the fresh new service. For that reason, the data on predicted genuine amounts of dowry (Fig. 1b) don’t tell you any decreasing pattern, conversely having those individuals said from inside the Fig. 1a.

step 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).