Is women's education & economic empowerment containing or aiding dowry in India?

• Why does dowry (gift of cash, gold, luxury car or apartment from the bride’s side to the groom’s side) persist even if giving and taking dowry are a criminal offence? 
• Is there any economics behind this? Is dowry like a scarcity rent?
• Does relative bargaining position of women vis-à-vis men affect a woman’s ability to find her preferred match, and how it can be improved?

In a hypergamous society like India wherein arranged marriage is still a preference, a typical woman would want to marry a man who's higher than her in socio-economic status. In cities, economic status is usually given more importance than social status. Hence, an engineer (from one of the NITs) girl (or her family) insists on marrying a boy who’s B. Tech from any of the IITs or one who’s done BE+MBA from reasonably good colleges and earns more than her. Thus, her choices would be something like the following:

• B. Tech from IIT
• B. Tech from NIT + MBA from a good b-school
• And in both the cases, the groom should earn more than the bride

Many people think that with better access to education, women will start working and be empowered. That will improve women’s status and do away the practice of dowry. However, the results are often the opposite.

May be, the form of dowry has changed from say extraction in cash to extraction in kind. The language has also changed from direct (demand for cash or gold) to subtle: we’re educated so we don’t believe in taking dowry for our son but you can give your daughter whatever you want. Who’re we to object? Otherwise, we’re okay if you send you daughter in two-piece clothing.”

Bollywood influences are also responsible for making wedding ceremonies lavish with designer clothing, jewelleries and foreign honeymoon. And grooms' families expect part if not all the finances to come from brides' families. 

Brides’ parents can read between the lines so they read. They know very well that if their daughter is sent without cash, gold or car…depending upon their socio-economic condition, her in-laws will make fun of their daughter. Besides, a majority of such parents also have similar expectations when it’s time to marry their own sons.

Law or no law, most people (rich or poor) do believe that taking or giving dowry is normal. This has become so common an expectation that even politicians have started promising a minimum quantity of gold (for brides) to woo women voters. Is there any economics behind?

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With more girls now educated and working than ever before, there is a growing demand for well-educated and well-paid boys. That tends to artificially increase (rather than decrease) the demand for prospective grooms.

Preference based on cast, colour, language, region, food and drink further narrows the matrimonial choices available for women. Men too are influenced by these factors but relatively less than women. For instance, a boy may be allowed to marry outside the caste if other things are okay but his sister may not be allowed to do so. This further tilts the demand equation in favour of men. 

Moreover, men can easily go down the ladder of choices. Thus, a well- educated and well-paid engineer groom can easily pick up an engineer, teacher or a non-working bride. To sum up, women have a relatively smaller pool of eligible matches (compared to men) to choose from in India’s matrimonial market.

Hence, grooms or their families have relatively better bargaining powers. As a result, they expect (and often extract) some kind of premium or scarcity rent even if they don’t ask for it directly. Maybe, the premium is given in different forms: from dowry in cash to dowry in kind - gold, flat, land, car or very good looking girl for average looking fatso boy. Other things remaining the same, a reverse of this is not easily possible by law or otherwise as things stand today. Failure of anti-dowry legislations in checking the incidences of dowry proves this point.

What happens if the bride sides are not ready to pay the premium?

Well-educated and well-paid women don't consider themselves inferior to well-educated and well-paid men, and rightly so. What if they refuse to entertain dowry demand – direct or subtle hint?

Thus, such women will have to wait for longer or in some cases may have to drop the idea of getting married to a partner of their choice or in a few extreme cases, the idea of marriage itself.

Many women, these days, also postpone marriage to advance their career. That further puts them at a disadvantage as women above 30 are not preferred for marriage because of likely complications in pregnancy – irrespective of the fact that whether this is logical backed by science or plain stupid backed by prejudice but that’s how it is.  It may also be because of typical Indian risk avoidance attitude – why to take a chance. But it’s there for sure. However, that works against women’s interest by eroding their bargaining power in India’s ruthless matrimonial market.

To deal with this, some women or their parents do lie about age (complexion and height) in matrimonial ads saying that they are younger, fairer and taller than they actually are i.e. 30 instead of 34, 5'4" instead of 5'2" and milky white instead of ‘wheatish’ complexion. However, that doesn’t often work in times of Facebook. It’s difficult to hide reality, as one is searchable these days, and one can’t really avoid being on Facebook or Instagram.

Thus, ambitious women by pursuing careers and bettering their career prospects may hurt their bargaining power and further prune down their options in marriage. This is not to argue that they shouldn’t be pursuing their career but that may work against them when they seek matrimonial alliances as things stand today.

How these well-educated and well-paid working women can improve their bargaining power without compromising their career goals?

Market economics is ruthless. If uncontrolled it only goes by demand and supply equation and nothing else. Moreover ‘equilibrium price’ does not mean ‘just or equitable’ price. It simply means buyers and sellers agree to do the transaction at that price, other things remaining the same.  Whether the buyer has compromised, or seller has compromised or happily agreed to do the transaction doesn’t make much of a difference. That’s the lesson from economics.

So if you want a better bargaining power, you’ve to either improve your demand or somehow reduce the supply of gals who’re competing with you for eligible bachelors. As you have limited control over supply, it’s better to focus on demand. Luckily marriage market is not perfectly competitive where all girls are equal. It’s actually monopolistic competition so some kind of product differentiation will be helpful. It’s also like real estate market – non-transparent with imperfect information. There is a lack of reliable information to base one’s decision. Plus, you can’t really check all prospective matches.

Google can help but not much you're seeking very personal information. Matrimonial websites may claim that they can cross-verify the credentials but it’s a really difficult work that can cost lots of money. Time is another constraint. Then, we Indians are very sensitive so you can’t really seek proofs for every other claim. Worse, given India’s social and legal reality, you can’t easily get out of a bad marriage. However, the following measures (mostly derived from economics) may help:

Right signalling - be honest and be vocal about what actually you’re looking for; what you won’t compromise on, and what you’re flexible about in a prospective match. Is it his income, good looks, education, humorous personality or matching kundalis or a combination of any of these traits that will make you say I do?

Please don’t say ‘kundali’ or horoscope didn't match when you're saying no to a prospective match because he doesn't earn much. Honestly say you're rejecting him because of his low income (nothing wrong about that) so that next time, your relationship manager at shaadi.com or jeevansathi.com picks up high earning matches for you rather than nice, humorous and family oriented but poor fellows, and waste your time.

Be realistic and rational: we’re highly inspired by what happens in Bollywood (and cricket), and seek partners resembling film stars (and cricketers). If you’re looking for someone like a Bollywood film star who can kill tigers if you want him to and yet who's fun to be with, then you’re being unreasonable and unrealistic. Remember, you can't usually get it all in one man.

With media highlighting the real-time actions of our much loved Bollywood stars (drunken brawl, rash driving leading to fatal accidents or public mud-slinging with past flames) and cricketers (who’re more into match fixing than cricket), it’s time for us to be realistic about life and life partners. None of the qualities – money income, height, macho build or humour - can guarantee a successful married life. You’ll have to work extra hard for that. Most people have to. No two ways about it.

Right timing: it’s betterto start shopping grooms early but that can be really distractive during education or early stage career. Luckily, in Indian arrange marriage setting, it can be outsourced to trusted family members such as parents, family friends and relatives but the side effect is that these so called well-wishers can be highly intrusive or prone to give unsolicited advices on what kind of spouse you really want.  

Increasing demand: women, you don't need to lie about your height or colour: Salma Hayek and Jodie Foster are shorter even by Indian standards. You don’t need to compare them with Julia Roberts. Yet, they are considered superhot. There are many dark- skinned hot Hollywood (Halle Berry for instance, who’s been voted as the sexiest woman ever) and Bollywood (Kajol, Bipasha Basu and many others) stars, many men will kill to date or marry. It’s time to curb our colour, height or other superficial obsession.

Please take colour and height as given, and work out for a good body that’s in your hand. Other things like humour, confidence, and pleasing personality can also be developed.

I have nothing against healthy or overweight women, but most men prefer slimmer women so weight shouldn’t put you at a disadvantage in a ruthless matrimonial market. Besides, even men are working on their bodies (Bollywood influence or increasing health consciousness) and using grooming products to look attractive so no sexism here.

Moreover, keeping fit makes a lot of sense: low medical bill, and low health insurance premium charges. That increases your bargaining power as you’re a low maintenance person so economists like me (sorry I’m already married so not active anymore in the marriage market) would give you extra weight when choosing their life partners. Here, I'm assuming economists are not in your negative list. If they are, my request to you would be to remove economists from your negative list. Studies show that economists usually have higher IQs and given the growing importance of behavioural economics, they’ll soon have higher IQs – good combination, I can say. Besides, you need to be flexible…that’s my next point.

Be flexible and be indifferent: by becoming flexible about cast, colour, food, language, education (from where he got that degree; most degrees are useless at jobs, believe you me, and going forward, an online and free course from Cousera or edX may be more valuable than an MBA degree from a top b-school) and salary that can only guarantee material living standard, not peace of mind. 

Being flexible also means if you’re a doctor you should be open to marrying an engineer or an MBA man too if other things are okay. You shouldn’t say that only a doctor can understand you better. Maybe! Maybe not! But that’s the case with non-doctor men as well. So you should be ready to take a chance on non-doctor prospects.

Being flexible a preferred age of your 'would be' helps. A 5-year older (than you) professional maybe more mature than you and may help you in bettering your career. Besides, he may be less rigid about his expectations knowing well about his relatively low bargaining power in the matrimonial market because of his age. There are many misconceptions about age gap in the success of marital life. You may like to read: how does age difference matter in a marriage? 

The above suggestions may help in improving your bargaining power in case of at least arranged marriage market (which is still the preference in India) and may help you in successfully thwarting the attempts of dowry seekers or at least reduce your dowry payment bill (either in cash or kind) substantially. However, there are alternatives to the above:

Love marriage is one such alternative through which you can find your soulmate, and yet you may not have to deal with dowry-related expectations. But not all women can be lucky. Moreover, the proportion of love marriages in the total number of marriages happening in India, is still low, hence, you can’t always rely on that. Besides, knowing someone well enough to marry is not an easy task either.  You can't really know a person well enough just by going out for a few drinks or movies together. India men are equally complicated if not more and so having a degree from top colleges don’t necessarily make them broad-minded.

Declining sex ratio can also tilt the balance in favour of women though that’s a long drawn process. Preference for boys in dowry loving parts of India like Punjab, Haryana and UP is likely to make the women relatively scarce in future. It has been observed that Indian states having high rates of dowry-related deaths are witnessing a decline in sex ratios. That’s a really sad development but that will improve the bargaining power of women in the matrimonial market and contain dowry demands going forward.

There’s one more thing: with growing nuclearization and preference for double income model, younger educated and metrosexual men (or their families) now increasingly prefer having well-educated and working spouses may be because of financial reasons. That may turn the game in favor of women – may be in next 5 to 10 years.

There is, however, one downside risk to that – if women workforce participation ratio becomes equal or near equal to men - needed to push India's GDP by as much as 27%. If that happens (though I doubt that it will happen anytime soon given the current workforce participation reality 80% in men versus 30% for women), women may lose in the relative bargaining game. Thus, the long turn solution to dowry in cash or in kind is no doubt lies in the end of hypergamy but that would be asking for too much. 

Disclaimer: please don’t accuse me of taking this serious problem so lightly in terms of demand, supply, and market economics. I’m sorry but I’m a compulsive-obsessive economist and kind of free-marketeer (sic) so I’m trying to find market-based solutions for this serious socio-cultural problem of India when making it a criminal offence doesn’t seem to be working. Education and economic empowerment of women are not working either, so I'm trying to figure out some alternatives if I can in my own small way.

A shorter version of this post has been published by The Huffington Post here

Please feel free to share your thoughts and views even if you substantially differ from me. Humans should differ because we're all unique in our own ways. If we're not connected, it's time to get to know each other. You can also get in touch with me on Twitter @RiteshEconomist and @DSmartConsumer

I’d welcome any non-legal suggestion on how to put a check on this menace of dowry that directly or indirectly kills a young woman almost every hour in India and we all need to stop this.

Related reading

The economics of marriage, HT Mint

Why you will marry a wrong person?

Information asymmetry: marriage, second-hand cars and jobs by Vivek Kaul

The economics of marriage I & II 

The great Indian wedding scam 

Issues and Challenges Faced By Women in an NRI Marriage

The inconvenient truth about love and divorce