Banerjee, Abhijit, Duflo, Esther, Ghatak, Maitreesh 
ORCID: 0000-0002-0126-0897 and Lafortune, Jeanne
(2009)
Marry for what?: caste and mate selection in modern India.
Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers (EOPP 009).
Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, London, UK.
Abstract
This paper studies the role played by caste, education and other social and economic attributes in arranged marriages among middle-class Indians. We use a unique data set on individuals who placed matrimonial advertisements in a major newspaper, the responses they received, how they ranked them, and the eventual matches. We estimate the preferences for caste, education, beauty, and other attributes. We then compute a set of stable matches, which we compare to the actual matches that we observe in the data. We find the stable matches to be quite similar to the actual matches, suggesting a relatively frictionless marriage market. One of our key empirical findings is that there is a very strong preference for within-caste marriage. However, because both sides of the market share this preference and because the groups are fairly homogeneous in terms of the distribution of other attributes, in equilibrium, the cost of wanting to marry within-caste is low. This allows caste to remain a persistent feature of the Indian marriage market.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Discussion Paper) |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstrac... |
| Additional Information: | © 2009 The Authors |
| Divisions: | Economics STICERD |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman |
| Date Deposited: | 14 Apr 2011 10:45 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Sep 2024 20:13 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/35618 |
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