A bride- price auction: “the most expensive bride in South Sudan”

 The Guardian has the story of a bride-price auction for a child bride in South Sudan:

A teenage bride wed for a record price: the ‘marriage competition’ that divided a nation   Underage marriage is illegal in South Sudan yet so commonplace it rarely attracts attention. But the case of Athiak Dau Riak, who her mother says is only 14, has gone viral, polarising her family and the country.  by Florence Miettaux 

"For months, Marial Garang Jil and Chol Marol Deng, two South Sudanese men in their 40s who come from two different Dinka clans in Jonglei state but now live abroad, had been vying to marry Athiak Dau Riak, a girl her mother says is 14.

...

"After the ceremonial part of the wedding in June, when she was given as a wife to Chol Marol Deng, for a payment of 123 cattle, 120m South Sudanese pounds (about $44,000 or £33,000) in cash and a plot of land, she was dubbed “the most expensive bride in South Sudan” in TikTok videos that gained thousands of likes.

...

"South Sudan’s 2008 Child Act prohibits early and forced marriage, but according to Unicef, child marriage is “still a common practice” and “recent figures indicate that 52% of girls [in South Sudan] are married before they turn 18, with some girls being married off as young as 12 years old”.

"An Edinburgh University-led report on the “brideprice” system in South Sudan says “customary courts often accept menstruation as the criteria for eligibility to marry” and early marriage is “a common practice … likely motivated by families’ ambitions to gain brideprices for their daughters as soon as possible”.

"Globally, 12 million girls are married in childhood every year, according to another Unicef report. Across sub-Saharan Africa, more than a third of young women were married before the age of 18."

An upside to dowries, by Natalie Bau, Gaurav Khanna, Corinne Low & Alessandra Voena

 Dowries (like bride prices*) are often criticized, but may have indirect effects that aren't so easy to see, as in this recent NBER paper:

Traditional Institutions in Modern Times: Dowries as Pensions When Sons Migrate by Natalie Bau, Gaurav Khanna, Corinne Low & Alessandra Voena  NBER WORKING PAPER 31176, DOI 10.3386/w31176

Abstract: This paper examines whether an important cultural institution in India - dowry - can enable male migration by increasing the liquidity available to young men after marriage. We hypothesize that one cost of migration is the disruption of traditional elderly support structures, where sons live near their parents and care for them in their old age. Dowry can attenuate this cost by providing sons and parents with a liquid transfer that eases constraints on income sharing. To test this hypothesis, we collect two novel datasets on property rights over dowry among migrants and among families of migrants. Net transfers of dowry to a man's parents are common but far from universal. Consistent with using dowry for income sharing, transfers occur more when sons migrate, especially when they work in higher-earning occupations. Nationally representative data confirms that migration rates are higher in areas with stronger historical dowry traditions. Finally, exploiting a large-scale highway construction program, we show that men from areas with stronger dowry traditions have a higher migration response to reduced migration costs. Despite its potentially adverse consequences, dowry may play a role in facilitating migration and therefore, economic development.

********

*Recall this earlier paper:

Ashraf, Nava, Natalie Bau, Nathan Nunn, and Alessandra Voena. "Bride price and female education." Journal of Political Economy 128, no. 2 (2020): 591-641.

Bride price in China

 The NY Times has the story:

In China, Marriage Rates Are Down and ‘Bride Prices’ Are Up. China’s one-child policy has led to too few women. Grooms are now paying more money for wives, in a tradition that has faced growing resistance.  By Nicole Hong and Zixu Wang

"As China faces a shrinking population, officials are cracking down on an ancient tradition of betrothal gifts to try to promote marriages, which have been on the decline. Known in Mandarin as caili, the payments have skyrocketed across the country in recent years — averaging $20,000 in some provinces — making marriage increasingly unaffordable. The payments are typically paid by the groom’s parents.

"To curb the practice, local governments have rolled out propaganda campaigns such as the Daijiapu event, instructing unmarried women not to compete with one another in demanding the highest prices. Some town officials have imposed caps on caili or even directly intervened in private negotiations between families.

...

"Officials have acknowledged their limited ability to eliminate a custom that many families see as a marker of social status. In rural areas, neighbors may gossip about women who command low prices, questioning whether something is wrong with them, according to researchers who study the custom.

*************

Earlier:

Friday, September 28, 2018

Bride price in rural China

Bride price in rural China

The Washington Post has a story about efforts to cap rising bride prices in one Chinese rural town:

The ‘bride price’ in China keeps rising. Some villages want to put a cap on it.

"The new rule was taped onto doorways around town: Officials were limiting what a groom-to-be could pay for a bride.

"The going rate was about $38,000, or five times the average annual salary in this village about four hours outside of Beijing. Now, families were told to keep it below $2,900.

"Anything more and they would risk being accused of human trafficking.

"The “bride price” — cash, and possibly a house or other goodies to the bride-to-be’s parents — has been part of the marriage pact in most of China for centuries. The costs, though, are swelling as China copes with one of the biggest demographic imbalances in history."

Bride price and the education of brides

Here's a new paper that casts bride price in a somewhat different light, with data from Indonesia and Zambia suggesting that girls who grow up in communities with bride price receive more education than those who grow up in similar communities that don't have bride price:


Bride Price and the Returns to Education, by Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Nathan Nunn, and  Alessandra Voena.  November 16, 2014

Abstract:

ABSTRACT
Traditional cultural practices can play an important role in development, but can also inspire condemnation. The custom of bride price, prevalent throughout sub-Saharan Africa and in parts of Asia as a payment of the groom to the family of the bride, is one example. In this paper, we show a surprising economic consequence of this practice. We revisit one of the best-studied historical development projects, the INPRES school construction program in Indonesia, and show that previously found null results on female enrollment mask heterogeneity by bride price tradition. Ethnic groups that traditionally engage in bride price payments at marriage increased female enrollment in response to the program. Within these ethnic groups, higher female education at marriage is associated with a higher bride price payment received, providing a greater incentive for parents to invest in girls' education and take advantage of the increased supply of schools. For those girls belonging to ethnic groups that do not practice bride price, we see no increase in education following school construction. We replicate these same findings in Zambia, where we exploit a similar school expansion program that took place in the early 2000s. While there may be significant downsides to a bride price tradition, our results suggest that any change to this cultural custom should likely be considered alongside additional policies to promote female education.

Marriage markets in China

Brook Larmer writes in the NY Times about the changing marriage market: The Price of Marriage in China (I like the URL better than the headline: it refers to business/in-a-changing-china-new-matchmaking-markets.) Her story (well worth reading in its entirety) follows two marriage markets, one an expensive matchmaking service for wealthy men, one an open air market in a park where mothers seek spouses for their children.

"Ms. Yang, 28, is one of China’s premier love hunters, a new breed of matchmaker that has proliferated in the country’s economic boom. The company she works for, Diamond Love and Marriage, caters to China’s nouveaux riches: men, and occasionally women, willing to pay tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars to outsource the search for their ideal spouse.
...
"When the woman walked into H & M, Ms. Yang intercepted her in the sweater aisle. “I’m so sorry to bother you,” she said with a honeyed smile. “I’m a love hunter. Are you looking for love?”

Three miles away, in a Beijing park near the Temple of Heaven, a woman named Yu Jia jostled for space under a grove of elms. A widowed 67-year-old pensioner, she was clearing a spot on the ground for a sign she had scrawled for her son. “Seeking Marriage,” read the wrinkled sheet of paper, which Ms. Yu held in place with a few fragments of brick and stone. “Male. Single. Born 1972. Height 172 cm. High school education. Job in Beijing.”

Ms. Yu is another kind of love hunter: a parent seeking a spouse for an adult child in the so-called marriage markets that have popped up in parks across the city. Long rows of graying men and women sat in front of signs listing their children’s qualifications. Hundreds of others trudged by, stopping occasionally to make an inquiry.

Ms. Yu’s crude sign had no flourishes: no photograph, no blood type, no zodiac sign, no line about income or assets. Unlike the millionaire’s wish list, the sign didn’t even specify what sort of wife her son wanted. “We don’t have much choice,” she explained. “At this point, we can’t rule anybody out.”

In the four years she has been seeking a wife for her son, Zhao Yong, there have been only a handful of prospects. Even so, when a woman in a green plastic visor paused to scan her sign that day, Ms. Yu put on a bright smile and told of her son’s fine character and good looks. The woman asked: “Does he own an apartment in Beijing?” Ms. Yu’s smile wilted, and the woman moved on.
...
"As many as 300 million rural Chinese have moved to cities in the last three decades. Uprooted and without nearby relatives to help arrange meetings with potential partners, these migrants are often lost in the swell of the big city.

"Demographic changes, too, are creating complications. Not only are many more Chinese women postponing marriage to pursue careers, but China’s gender gap — 118 boys are born for every 100 girls — has become one of the world’s widest, fueled in large part by the government’s restrictive one-child policy. By the end of this decade, Chinese researchers estimate, the country will have a surplus of 24 million unmarried men.

"Without traditional family or social networks, many men and women have taken their searches online, where thousands of dating and marriage Web sites have sprung up in an industry that analysts predict will soon surpass $300 million annually. These sites cater mainly to China’s millions of white-collar workers. But intense competition, along with mistrust of potential mates’ online claims, has spurred a growing number of singles — rich and poor — to turn to more hands-on matchmaking services.
...
"Dozens of high-end matchmaking services have sprung up in China in the last five years, charging big fees to find and to vet prospective spouses for wealthy clients. Their methods can turn into gaudy spectacle. One firm transported 200 would-be trophy wives to a resort town in southwestern China for the perusal of one powerful magnate. Another organized a caravan of BMWs for rich businessmen to find young wives in Sichuan Province. Diamond Love, among the largest love-hunting services, sponsored a matchmaking event in 2009 where 21 men each paid a $15,000 entrance fee.
...
"The company’s wealthiest, highest-paying clients — 90 percent of whom are men — show little interest in lectures or databases. They want exclusive access to what Ms. Fei coolly refers to as “fresh resources”: young women who haven’t yet been exposed to other suitors online. It’s the love hunters’ job to find them.

"Besides giving clients a vastly expanded pool of marriage prospects, these campaigns offer a sense of security. Rigorous background checks screen out what Ms. Fei calls “gold diggers, liars and people of loose morals.” Depending on a campaign’s size, Diamond Love charges from $50,000 to more than $1 million. Ms. Fei makes no apologies for the high fees.

“Why shouldn’t they pay more to find the perfect wife?” she asked me. “This is the most important investment in their lives.”
...
"One afternoon when we met, the normally animated Ms. Yang slumped onto the sofa, exhausted. She had just spent an hour with a rich Chinese businesswoman in her late 30s. The woman proposed spending $100,000 on a campaign to find a husband who matched her status.

“I had to tell her we couldn’t take her case,” Ms. Yang said. “No wealthy Chinese man would ever marry her. They always want somebody younger, with less power.”

"We sat in silence a minute before Ms. Yang spoke again. “It’s depressing to think about these ‘leftover women,’ ” she said. “Do you have them in America, too?”
...
"The marriage candidates on offer in the parks, she discovered, were often a mismatch of shengnu (“leftover women”) and shengnan (“leftover men”), two groups from opposite ends of the social scale. Shengnan, like her son, are mostly poor rural men left behind as female counterparts marry up in age and social status. The phenomenon is exacerbated by China’s warped demographics, as the bubble of excess men starts to reach marrying age.

Finding a Chinese spouse can be even more challenging for so-called leftover women, even if they often have precisely what the shengnan lack: money, education and social and professional standing. One day in the Temple of Heaven park, I met a 70-year-old pensioner from Anhui Province who was seeking a husband for his eldest daughter, a 36-year-old economics professor in Beijing.

“My daughter is an outstanding girl,” he said, pulling from his satchel an academic book she had published. “She’s been introduced to about 15 men over the past two years, but they all rejected her because her degree is too high.”
...
"Even in the countryside, where men’s families pay bride prices, inflation is rampant. Ms. Yu’s family paid about $3,500 when Mr. Zhao’s older brother married 10 years ago in rural Heilongjiang. Today, she said, brides’ families ask for $30,000, even $50,000. An apartment, the urban equivalent of the bride price, is even further out of reach. At Mr. Zhao’s current income, it would take a decade or two before he could  afford a small Beijing apartment, which he said would start at about $100,000. “I’ll be an old man by then,” he said with a rueful smile.
...
"Not long after our conversation in McDonald’s, Mr. Zhao met the woman at a coffee shop. It was, he told me later, even more awkward than most first dates. A rural migrant and door-to-door salesman, he struggled to find a shared topic of interest with the woman, a 35-year-old entrepreneur and Beijing native who had arrived driving a BMW sedan.

The lack of chemistry didn’t seem to bother the woman, who told him about her profitable photo business and the three Beijing apartments she owned. Mr. Zhao didn’t find her unattractive, but how was he supposed to respond? Then, even before broaching the possibility of a second date, he said, the woman made a proposition: if they married, he wouldn’t have to work again.
...
"in the end, he couldn’t imagine being subordinate to a woman. “If I accepted that situation,” he asked me, “what kind of man would I be?”
...
"The news frustrated Ms. Yu. “Kids these days are way too picky,” she said.

Marriage among the Tinkers of Thrace

"The NY Times reports on the evolution of the market for brides among Bulgarian Roma: Subtle Shift at the Gypsy Bride Market

"STARA ZAGORA, BULGARIA — In a field outside town, teenage girls in skimpy outfits worked the crowd at what is known locally as the “Gypsy bride market.” Clad by contrast in long velvet skirts and brightly colored headscarves, their proud mothers watched. Gold flashed on necks, fingers, ears and teeth.


"Meet the tinkers of Thrace, semi-nomadic Roma who in the early 21st century are among the few in Europe hewing to ancient ways.
...
"Technically, the young women at this traditional St. Todor’s Day “market” were not for sale. But it is at this fair, held each year on the first Saturday of Orthodox Christian Lent, that the Kalaidzhi (as the estimated 18,000 Thracian tinkers are known) conduct the complex negotiations on a bride price that traditionally lead to marriage.


"The identity of this semi-nomadic Roma group is based on the ancient craft of its menfolk: producing and repairing pots, pans and caldrons. For centuries, these smiths have scattered in ones or twos in Bulgarian villages to practice this craft, and they get together rarely for events like the St. Todor’s fair.


"This is therefore one of the few opportunities for teenagers to meet other Kalaidzhi — and potential spouses. Dating is not really an option when teenage boys and girls are forbidden to meet without an adult. Marriage outside the group is equally taboo.


"Leaning against his car, surveying the scene, Hristos Georgiev, 18, was pleased to be wrapping up negotiations with the father of Donka Dimitrova, an 18-year-old he expected to marry weeks later. Bargaining had narrowed to between 10,000 and 15,000 levs, or $7,500 to $11,300, well more than a year’s worth of the average Bulgarian’s wages of 8,400 levs. He said he saved the money working construction in Cyprus.


"According to Velcho Krustev, an ethnographer with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, “the man is not buying a wife, but her virginity.” The payment ensures the bride will be treated well by her new family, he said.
...
"Kalaidzhi are among the most tradition-bound of Roma. But even they are changing — to the distaste of elders like Ivan Kolev, 73.


"While he insisted the bride price would stay — “our people always insist that a girl be a virgin” — he noted that Kalaidzhi women “were much shyer” when he married some 50 years ago. “Now they just elope. Now they go around like Bulgarians.”

Repugnant transactions concerning brides

From the sale of child brides in Saudi Arabia to the difficulty of enforcing the laws against Suttee (self-immolation on the husband's funeral pyre) in India, marriage is a fertile area of contention about practices that many find repugnant even in cases that the parties themselves may not.

In Saudi Ariabia, a small victory for social liberals in the contest with social and religious conservatives over whether sales of children into marriage are a repugnant transaction: Victory for Saudi girl, 8, sold by her father to a 50-year-old man
"The girl, who has not been named and who has been living with her mother in the city of Onaiza, was given to the older man in marriage by her father to pay off a debt." ...

"The case has reopened the debate in Saudi Arabia on whether a minimum age for marriage should be introduced. After the first two petitions failed, the Saudi newspaper columnist Amal al-Zahid wrote: “The trafficking of child brides — a most reactionary practice that takes us back to the days of concubines [and] slave girls” should be outlawed. She added that the country was incurring “behavioural abnormalities and problems of which only Allah knows”.
Human rights groups in Saudi Arabia and abroad have condemned the practice of child marriages. "
...
"Some attempts are being made to strengthen women’s rights. The Justice Ministry is reported to be considering reforms to impose a minimum age for marriage and to end abuses of the system by fathers of girls.
In February King Abdullah appointed Norah al-Fayez as the Deputy Minister for Women’s Education, the first woman minister in the kingdom. It has also signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Despite such efforts, many traditionalists in positions of influence in government and religious life are becoming more strict in their observance of Islamic law. The country’s highest religious authority, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Shaikh, has said that it is not against Islamic law to marry girls under the age of 15."

In India, suttee has been illegal since the 1800's, but in some Indian communities it continues to be thought of as a source of honor, and it has been difficult to entirely eradicate, in part because some instances seem to be voluntary decisions by the wives.

Like the sale of child brides in Saudia, the prospect that some of these instances may not be voluntary casts them in a different light, and changes the debate from one that might resemble the controversies involving assisted suicide to the more straightforward debates about human trafficking and murder. But the discussion is complicated by the fact that, in both Saudi Arabia and India, there is a not insubstantial community that finds such transactions appropriate.

Marriage market in Iran

The marriage market in Iran is not proceeding as planned, the Guardian reports: Premarital sex on rise as Iranians delay marriage, survey finds

"The survey also revealed that the average marrying age had risen to 40 for men and 35 for women, a blow to the government's goal of promoting marriage to shore up society's Islamic foundations."

The rise in age of marriage might be a result of religious barriers being raised to courtship between unmarried men and women. But there are other hypotheses to consider:

"Many blame economic circumstances for their failure to marry, citing high inflation, unemployment and a housing shortage along with cultural traditions that expect brides' families to provide dowries and husbands to commit themselves to mehrieh, an agreed cash gift."

"However, Hojatoleslam Ghasem Ebrahimipour, a sociologist, told Shabestan news agency that the trend was due to the availability of premarital sex, and feminism among educated women. "When a woman is educated and has an income, she does not want to accept masculine domination through marriage," he said."

Marriage market: dowries

The previous post got me thinking about dowries and their role in marriage markets: the paper I like best is "Why Dowries?" American Economic Review 93, no. 4 (September 2003): 1385-98, by Maristella Botticini and Aloysius Siow.

They argue that dowries make the most sense in agrarian societies in which daughters move to their husband's family upon marriage, while sons stay and invest in the family business. Thus parents who wish to support both sons and daughters give dowries to daughters and bequests (inheritances) to sons (instead of bequests to both, which would give sons less incentive to invest in running the family business...). As societies become less agrarian, and sons become less likely to remain in the family business, it becomes more efficient to treat sons and daughters more similarly and e.g. invest more in human capital by sending them both to college, etc...

Marriage market: Middle East

Head of Palestinian clan offers Iraqi shoe-throwing journalist a bride

"The head of a large West Bank family wants to reward the Iraqi journalist who lobbed his shoes at President George W. Bush by sending him a bride. 75-year-old Ahmad Salim Judeh says if journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi is interested the family is willing to take one of its eligible daughters to Iraq along with her dowry. ... Al-Zeidi has become something of a folk hero since throwing his shoes at President Bush at a Sunday press conference."