Economics of bride price and dowry

Abstract

This paper examines a major socio-economic development in recent times — viz, the switch of entire endogumous groups from the bride-price to the dowry system. There has been conversion of whole communities, not merely the segment of each which impinges on the organised sector. Indeed, dowry as an organised-sector phenomenon is easily explained. But it is as a wholly unorganised sector phenomenon that the switch from bride-price to dowry 1s intriguing. First a search is needed for the necessary and sufficient conditions that have led to this; and second for an answer to the question as to whether and in what circumstances the system of dowry payment is more widely punitive in its incidence than the bride-price system. This paper examines both issues, and concludes that a dowry system which evolves from a bride-price system on account of a decline in fema'e contribution to family income alone, without any other parallel developments, will have a punitive incidence no greater than that of the system replaced. For a dowry system to be more extensively punitive, there would be other accompanying develop- ments that would make dowry lose its purely compensatory character.