Terror as a Bargaining Scme aspects of volenL
behavior are linked to
Instrum ent economic incentives and
deserve more attention from
A Case Study of Dowry Violence e(conomists. In India, for
example, domestic violence is
in Rural India used as a bargaining
instrument, to extract larger
Francis Bloch dowries from a wife's family,
Vijayendra Rao after the marriage has taken
place.
The World Bank
Development Research Group
Poverty and Human Resources
May 2000
l POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER 2347
Summary findings
Bloch and Rao examine how domestic violence may be women who come from richer families (from whom
used as a bargaining instrument, to extract larger dowries resources can more easily be extracted). Larger dowries
from a spouse's family. The phrase "dowry violence" - as well as greater satisfaction with the marriage (in the
refers not to the dowry paid at the time of the wedding, form of more male children) - reduce the probability of
but to additional payments demanded by the groom's violence.
family after the marriage. The additional dowry is often In India marriage is almost never a matter of choice for
paid to stop the husband from systematically beating the women, but is driven almost entirely by social norms and
wife. parental preferences. Providing opportunities for women
Bloch and Rao base their case study of three villages in outside of marriage and the marriage market would
southern India on qualitative and survey data. Based on significantly improve their well-being by allowing them
the ethnographic evidence, they develop a noncooper- to leave an abusive husband, or find a way of "bribing"
ative bargaining and signaling model of dowries and him to stop the abuse, or present a credible threat, which
domestic violence. They test the predictions from those has the same effect.
models on survey data.
They find that women whose families pay smaller
dowries suffer increased risk of marital violence. So do
This paper - a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the
group to examine crime and violence in developing countries. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank,
1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Patricia Sader, room MC3-556, telephone 202-473-3902, fax
202-522-1153, email address psader@worldbank.org. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at
www.worldbank.org/research/workingpapers. Vijayendra Rao may be contacted at vrao@worldbank.org. May 2000. (29
pages)
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about
development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The
papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this
paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the
countries they represent.
Produced by the Policy Research Dissemination Center
Terror as a Bargaining Instrument:
A Case-Study of Dowry Violence in Rural India
Francis Bloch Vijayendra Rao
IRES, Universite Catholique de Louvain Development Research Groujp, The World Bank
We are indebted to Rama Ranee and Mrichakatika for their help with the fieldwork. Valuable
suggestions were provided by three anonymous referees, Ralph Bradburd, Roger Bolton, Jill
Constantine, Donald Cox, Andrew Foster, Emmanuel Jimenez, Russel Murphy, Sita Reddy, and
seminar participants at British Columbia, Michigan, Williams and the World Bank. Rao is
grateful to the Mellon and Schalckebach Foundations, the Population Centers at Michigan and
Brown, and Williams College for financial support. Bloch thanks the Foundation HEC for
sponsoring his participation in the project. Please refer correspondence to V. Rao, Development
Research Group, The World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington DC 20433. e-mail:
vrao@worldbank.org
1. Introduction
The threat of violence is often used as a means of redistributing resources. The Mafia
extorts protection money from people under its control, and terrorists threaten hostages with death
in order to extract concessions from governments. There is obviously a great deal of economic
content in violent behavior and yet it has been neglected as a subject of research by most
economists'. One prominent example of economically motivated violence comes from the Indian
sub-continent where numerous press reports indicate the widespread use of wife-abuse as a means
of extracting transfers from the wife's parent&. In its most publicized form, disputes over the
dowry give rise to what newspapers describe as "dowry murders" where wives are burned alive
by their husband's families3. Thus, "dowry" violence does not refer directly to marriage related
payments made at the time of the wedding, but to additional payments demanded after the
marriage by the groom's family where the husband systematically abuses the wife in order to
extract larger transfers. In this paper we conduct a case-study of domestic violence in rural India
focusing on its use as a bargaining instrument.
There is a small literature on the economics of domestic violence; Tauchen, Witte and
Long (1991) and Farrner and Tiefenthaler (I 997) develop and test non-cooperative bargaining
models of violence, and Farmer and Tiefenthaler (1996) theoretically examine how the use of
shelters can serve as a signal of a woman's tolerance of violence. More recently, Lundberg and
Pollak (1998) have constructed a model of the intergenerational transmission of domestic
violence. The literature on intra-household bargaining is both more extensive and more empirical
(Alderman, Chiappori and Kanbur, 1995). Most of these studies follow the work of Manser and
Brown (1980) and McElroy and Homey (1981) who develop cooperative models of bargaining
within marriage with divorce as the threat point. Lundberg and Pollak (1 993) extend this by
allowing for an internal non-cooperative threat point where the husband and wife live in "separate
spheres."
Our paper differs from these literatures in various ways: It employs ethnographic
information on the behaviors underlying dowry related violence culled from open ended
interviews conducted in three villages in rural South India to inform the development of a non-
' Chwe (1990) is an exception.
2 See Karlekar (1998) for a survey of the literature on domestic violence in India. This problem is not
unique to India, Jahan(199 1), presents an account of the same phenomenon in Bangladesh.
3 One study estimates that 25 per cent of deaths of women between the ages of 15 aiid 30 in the city of
Bombay can be attributed to death by burning - the single highest cause of mortality in that age group (Karkal,
1985).
3
cooperative model of bargaining and signaling. Predictions from the model are then
econometrically tested with survey data collected from the same population that is the focus of
the ethnographic interviews. Thus, our paper is unusual in two respects. Firstly, it introduces
asymmetric information into a model of household bargaining where domestic violence is used as
a signal of the husband's satisfaction with the marriage. Secondly, it combines economic and
anthropological methods to rigorously examine violence within the context of Indian marriage
markets employing data collected by the authors. We find that marital violence is not only
closely linked to low dowry payments, but that a woman who comes from a wealthy family is
more likely to be beaten by her husband in an effort to extract higher transfers from her parents.
The paper is structured as follows: Following this introduction Section 2 summarizes the
cultural context and the ethnographic information, Section 3 outlines the theoretical model,
Section 4 describes the data and lays out the econometric methodology, and Section 5 analyzes
the empirical results, provides policy implications and concludes the paper.
2. Cultural Context
To understand why the phenomenon of dowry violence is so widespread, it might help to
outline the basic nature of Indian marriage markets4: Marriage is restricted to endogamous
groups, i.e.: people are only permitted to marry within a well-defined set of families who make
up their sub-caste. Sub-castes usually share a common characteristic that distinguishes them from
other groups; for instance, they may all traditionally practice one occupation, or they may follow
unique religious practices. The sub-caste we study in this paper is a potter community in the
South Indian State of Karnataka. The craft of pottery was their primary source of employment
for many generations, but today the majority are casual laborers. Yet, any individual from the
community would face large social sanctions if s/he married someone who belonged to a non-
potter caste. Thus, while their caste affiliation may no longer reflect their current occupation, it
continues to define them as a social group.
A second feature of the marriage market is that it is patrilocal - brides leave their parents'
home to live with their husbands. A third is that marriages are arranged for both grooms and
brides by their parents. Finally it is important to note that marriage is considered final and, while
4 While there other important factors that affect domestic violence (Karlekar 1998, Rao 1998), this paper
focuses on its connection with the marriage market.
4
there are cases of separation, divorce is not an option5. Some of these features have become less
restrictive in educated urban circles, but they continue to be a defining aspect of village life.
Getting one's daughter married is considered an Indian parent's primary duty and to have
an older unmarried daughter is a tremendous misfortune with large social and economic costs.
However, the costs of getting a daughter married have been steadily rising in real terms across the
Indian sub-continent. In the community that we focus on here dowries have been increasing
substantially for at least two decades. Dowries6 among the potters average six times the annual
income of a bride's parents, an amount that is consistent with findings from other samples. One
possible reason for the rise in dowries is that grooms are scarce. Population growth may have
resulted in a surplus of women from large younger cohorts attempting to match with men from
smaller older cohorts (Rao 1993, Bhat and Halli 1999). Our respondents provided us with
explanations that were consistent with this saying that they were willing to pay (and demand)
such high dowries because that there was a shortage of eligible males. One woman listed the
eligible males available for her fifteen-year-old daughter and demonstrated that the competition
for them was quite severe with thirteen females competing for six males.
Once the wedding is celebrated and the newly married bride has moved to her husband's
home, she is not only a bride but also a potential hostage. Since divorce is impossible, under no
circumstances can she move back permanently to her parent's home. Thus, violence can be used
as a mechanism to extract further transfers from the bride's family. In fact, alll the wife-abusers
whom we had in-depth interviews with justified their behavior with "instrumental" explanations,
as a means to extract transfers or control resources.
The interviews that we conducted revealed that there was a close link between much of
the abuse by the groom's family and the demand for transfers from the bride's family. We will
illustrate this link with a brief outline of the case of Sannamma and Raju, a young couple who
had been married for about two years. Their parents arranged the marriage vhen Sannamma was
17 and Raju was about 24, and the wedding was celebrated about six months later. Sanamma's
parents are relatively rich with about 10 acres of irrigated land, while Raju's were considerably
5 According the 1991 Indian Census, in this region of India the divorce rate is estimated at 0.3 per cent.
6 The term "dowry" has been used in a number of different ways in the literature. We will employ it to
mean a groom-price, a payment in cash and/or kind directly made from a bride's family to a groom's. We
will call the reverse transaction a brideprice.
7 This ratio excludes those bride-households that received brideprices, since this community, like many
others in the sub-continent, has undergone a transition from paying brideprice to dowry. When brideprice
families are included the average dowry is about double the size of annual incomes. These ratios are very
similar to those in the frequently analyzed ICRISAT survey which was conducted in two neighboring
states (Rao, 1993).
5
poorer. Raju shared a house with his parents, his brothers, and their wives and children who all
lived off the five acre plot of un-irrigated land supplemented by intermittent work as wage
laborers. Raju received a dowry of about 25,000 rupees as a dowry, which is about half the size
of most other dowries paid in the community at the time. A few months into the marriage, he
demanded that Sanamma ask her father to send them some money so that he could set up a small
tea shop. Sannamma agreed and her father sent Raju about 2000 rupees which is what Raju
made in 4 months. About two months later Raju demanded a motorcycle, which at about 50,000
rupees was a considerably larger request well beyond the means of Sanamma's parents. But
Sannamma passed on the request to her parents who said that they could not afford such a large
sum of money. When Raju heard this, he became very angry, hit her, threw her to the ground and
said that if her parents did not send the money, "he could not say what might happen to her."
Subsequently tensions between Sannamma and Raju increased considerably. Sannamma at this
point was very scared, and again asked her parents to send the money. Sannamma says that she
now lives in fear of her life. Her parents send money when they can, even though they cannot
really afford to keep up with Raju's demands. However, Sannamma refuses to leave her husband
and go back to her parents fearing social isolation.
It should be noted that we did not record any instances of murder - dowry related or
otherwise - in these villages9. However, if one thinks of murder as the most extreme mechanism
of marital separation in a society that forbids divorce, we observed less severe but far more
common methods by which husbands ended their relationships with their wives and their wives'
parents. Wives in bad marriages are often forced by their husbands to break all contact with their
parents while being denied access to their husband's income and resources, forcing them to fend
for themselves. Thus, while they may continue to live in the same physical space as their
husbands because of the taboo against formal divorce, they are effectively abandoned and isolated
from family and friends. In the Indian social context where a woman's sense of self is almost
entirely derived from her relationship to her family and her social milieu 1'- social and economic
isolation have extremely large costs. Moreover, in some instances a husband who abandons his
wife may remarry, though this is not an option for the abandoned wife2.
s The names of respondents have been changed.
9 There was one suspicious death of a young wife that was ruled a suicide by the police.
' Kakar (1989) and Fruzzetti (1982) provide illuminating discussions of this.
We recorded one instance where a man had remarried after abandoning his wife and moving to another
village. We did not record any instances of polygamy though it is not unknown in the region.
6
3. Theoretical Model
While no model can capture all the complex factors that affect marital violence, our task
is to construct a theoretical model informed by the qualitative evidence that generates testable
hypotheses. From our fieldwork, it is apparent that violence is not simply due to the husbands'
inherent pleasure in beating their wives. Rather, we argue that domestic violence is an instrument
used by the husband in the wider context of bargaining between the husband's and wife's families
over the distribution of their resources. In the cultural context we consider, marriage is viewed as
the establishment of durable links between the two families (rather than individuals) and usually
implies transfers of resources from one family to the other'2. Transfers can be of two types,
dowries, which are negotiated before the wedding, and post-marriage transfers that are
determined after the wife has moved into her husband's home. As explained above, in the
cultural context of the villages we are studying, the links between the two families are never
terminated through a formal divorce. We have, however, observed instances of what we call
"separation" - situations where the husband has broken all links with the wife's family and forced
her to fend for herself economically and socially, though she may continue to live in the same
physical space as the husband.
Following the South Asian cultural context, we distinguish between two phases of
negotiation. Before the marriage is concluded, the two families bargain over the dowry that will
be paid by the wife's family to the husband's. Once the marriage has taken place, and the wife
has moved to the husband's family, the husband's family may renegotiate the agreement and
make additional financial demands on the wife's family. In a world of complete information,
since domestic violence is costly to both families, it will never arise in an equilibrium of the
bargaining game. Hence, to understand the instrumental effect of domestic violence, we consider
a model with asymmetric information. We suppose that, after the marriage is concluded, the
husband discerns his private level of satisfaction with the marriage. Dissatisfied husbands prefer
to separate from their wives if they do not receive additional transfers while satisfied husbands do
not benefit from separation. A dissatisfied husband may exercise domestic violence to show his
dissatisfaction with the marriage, in order to extract additional transfers fiom the wife's family by
credibly threatening her with separation if no transfers are made. We thus interpret domestic
12 Since the model does not distinguish between husbands and wives and their families, we will sometimes
use "husband" for the husband's family and "wife" for the wife's family.
7
violence as a signal sent by dissatisfied husbands to reveal their types. The possibility of domestic
violence after the wedding clearly affects the premarital negotiation over the dowry. The wife's
family is aware that low dowry payments may result in the exercise of violence and the payment
of additional transfers and adjusts its initial dowry offer accordingly. Hence, in the model we
consider, the level of dowry and the incidence of violence are determined simultaneously. We
now turn to a formal description of the model.
3.1 Preferences and Timing
We suppose that the preferences of the husband's and wife's families depend on the
current status of the marriage. If the marriage is intact, both families benefit from the links
created, and utilities depend both on each family's income and human capital and on a set of
variables pertaining to the other family. Specifically, we assume that preferences can be
represented by the utility functions
L(Ih, Xh, Xw, 0)
(JW(Jw, Xh, X,,)
where li, i=h,w represents the income of the husband's and wife's families, xb i=h,w denotes a
vector of human capital characteristics of husbands, wives, and their families that contribute to
utility, and t is the husband's private level of satisfaction with the marriage. We suppose that the
husband's private level of satisfaction is a dichotomous random variable, with value I when the
husband is satisfied and 0 when he is dissatisfied. The prior probability that the husband is
dissatisfied depends on a set of observed attributes of the marriage, z, that are realized after the
wedding. We denote this prior probability byp(z) withp '(z) < 0. The utility functions ct and UW
are strictly increasing in all their arguments and strictly concave in income.
If the husband separates from his wife, the preferences of the two families change. As the
links between the two families are severed, the families cannot benefit any longer from links with
the other family. Furthermore, following the cultural context, the situations of the husband and
wife after separation are asymmetric: the husband can eventually remarry whereas the wife
cannot. The utilities of the husband's and wife's families after separation are thus given by:
8
V (Ih Xh, m2)
and
r('IW, xW)
where m2 is an indicator of the marriage market conditions faced by the husband if he remarries.
The utility functions Ve and r are strictly increasing in all their arguments and strictly concave in
income.
When the marriage is intact, links between the two families generate goodwill and other
positive effects due to economies of scale and joint production that increase the marginal utility
of income for both families. Intact families may also face the responsibility of not only looking
after their children, but also other members of the extended family while spending money on
festivals and gifts in order to participate in kin networks with relatives and friends. Thus, we
assume that the marginal utility of income is higher in intact than in separated families. Formally,
letting Llk, VWk, JAk, rk denote the partial derivatives of the utility functions with respect to the
k-th variable,
Assumption 1: LI1 (IS~ xh, xW, 0 > hI(Ih, Xh, m2) and UI (I, x, x,v) > V I (Iw, xw).
We decompose the income of the husband's and wife's families as
I = Y + D + t
Iw= Yw- D -t
where Yh and Yw denote the initial income of the two families, D the dowry paid by the wife's
family to the husband and, t the additional transfers eventually made by the wife's family after
the wedding.
If the husband exercises domestic violence, both families are subject to utility losses
measured by Ch(9) and Cw. We assume that the husband's utility loss is decreasing in his
satisfaction with the marriage and includes both a fixed and a random component,
Ch(9)= Ch() +(K
9
where K is a random variable with prior cumulative distribution FK.
In our model, the husband's private level of satisfaction induces two effects: it raises the
utility obtained in marriage as well as the cost of violent behavior. A husband can be "satisfied"
for a number of reasons - he may simply enjoy being married to his wife and being linked with
her family, or he may have a predisposition towards non-violence. It was clear from our
fieldwork that some men were simply not violent "types" in the sense that they expressed strong
sentiments against violence and tended to look down upon violent men. Thus, in order to
simplify the analysis, we characterize satisfied and dissatisfied husbands in the following way.
Satisfied husbands obtain a positive surplus from marriage even when they don't receive any
additional payments, and incur a very high cost of violence. Dissatisfied husbands prefer to
separate from their wives if they don't receive any additional payment, and incur a moderate cost
of violence. Formally, we assume
Assumption 2:
Uh(Yh +D, Xh, x,, 1) - Ve (Yh+D, Xh, m2) > 0 and Ch(l) > Mfor all positive M.
Ul(Yh +D, Xh, x, 0) - V (Yh+D, Xh, m2) < 0 and C,h(0) < M for some positive M.
On the other hand, since women who are separated suffer such high social and economic costs in
this context, we suppose that the wife's family always suffers from separation when no transfers
are made and that the cost of domestic violence is not as high as the cost of separation,
Assumption 3:
UW(YW -D, Xh, xw) - V (Yh-D, xw) > 0 and C, < Uw(Y,-D, Xh, xw) - vr (Yh-D, x,w).
The different stages of the bargaining between the two families are illustrated in Figure 1.
Before the marriage is concluded, the wife's family makes a take-it-or-leave-it-offer to the
husband's family, determining the level of dowry paid. Once the wedding has taken place, the
two families learn the marriage market conditions m2 and the attributes of the marriage z ; the
husband learns his private level of satisfaction Oand his cost of violence K. At the signaling
stage, the husband announces a level of transfer t and chooses whether or not to exercise violence.
The wife's family observes the occurrence of violence, revises her beliefs on the husband's type
10
and responds to the demand. In the final stage of the game, the husband chooses whether to
separate from his wife.
FIGURE 1
3.2 Renegotiation and Signaling
We start the analysis of the theoretical model with the post-marital renegotiation and
signaling game and proceed by backward induction to compute the Bayesian Perfect Equilibria of
the game.'3 At the last stage, the husband chooses whether to sever the links with the wife's
family.
Under Assumption 2, satisfied husbands never separate from their w ives whereas
dissatisfied husbands leave their wives if they don't receive any additional transfer. We define the
minimal transfer that prevents a dissatisfied husband from leaving his wife, th as the solution to
Yh +D+t, x x,w, O)- 0'Yh+D+ t, xh, m2)=O. (1)
Given Assumption 1, Equation (1) either has a unique interior solution th Ol' =Z.
At the third stage of the game, the wife's family responds to the husband's demand
anticipating his future separation decision. As the wife has incomplete information about the
husband's type, we let p denote her belief that the husband is dissatisfied at that stage. The wife
thus believes that with probability p, the demand comes from a dissatisfied husband who will
abandon her if she rejects the demand and with probability (l-p) that the demand comes from a
satisfied husband who will never separate. Hence we define the maximal transfer that the wife's
family is willing to pay to maintain links, tw(p), as the solution to
p Vr (Y.-D, xw) + (l-p) UL (Y1-D, Xh, xw) - Uw (YW-D-t, xh, xw) = 0. (2)
13 See Fudenberg and Tirole (1991, p. 325) for a formal definition of Bayesian Perfect Equilibrium in
signaling games.
11
Given Assumption 3, Equation (2) either has a unique solution tw(p) or tw(p) = oo. It is easy to
see that the maximal transfer that the wife's family is willing to pay is decreasing in the belief
p. In order to simplify the analysis, we assume that, when the wife's family believes that she
faces a dissatisfied husband with certainty, she is willing to pay him a transfer which prevents
him from separating. On the other hand, when the wife's family keeps her prior beliefs on the
husband's type, we suppose that the maximal transfer she is willing to pay is not sufficient to
prevent the husband from leaving her.
Assumption 4: tv(1)> e>t r(p(z)).
While Assumption 4 is not expressed in terms of the primitives of the model, it can easily
be interpreted. The first inequality, tw(J) > e, is satisfied if the wife's family is willing to pay
enough to make sure that her husband stays in the marriage when he is dissatisfied, i.e.: when her
cost of separation is much higher than the husband's benefits from separation. The second
inequality, h > tw(p(z)), is satisfied if the proportion of dissatisfied husbands in the population is
low enough.
We can now characterize the optimal behavior of the wife's family at the third stage of
the game. The wife's family should reject any demand t < te and any demand t > t(p), and accept
any demand t satisfying: tw(p) 2 t > te.
At the signaling stage, the husband announces the transfer t and chooses whether to
exercise domestic violence. By Assumption 2, satisfied husbands never beat their wives. Hence,
there can only be two equilibria in the signaling game: a pooling equilibrium, where neither type
of husband beats his wife, and a separating equilibrium, where dissatisfied husbands beat their
wives when the cost of domestic violence is not too high.
Pooling Equilibrium
In a pooling equilibrium, neither type of husband exercises violence, and the wife keeps
her prior beliefp(z). By Assumption 4, the wife rejects any transfer demand from the husband's
family, and the level of the transfer requested by the husband's family is indeterminate.
For this equilibrium to exist, the out-of-equilibrium belief must be specified so that a dissatisfied
husband has no incentive to deviate and exercise violence. This implies that the wife's family
rejects any demand t > /' after observing violence. Since, by Assumption 4, tw(J) > x, the wife's
family must assign a positive probability that the husband is satisfied after observing violence.
12
Separating Equilibrium
In a separating equilibrium, a dissatisfied husband exercises violence if the cost of
domestic violence is not too high, and does not exercise violence otherwise. A satisfied husband
never exercises violence. When the wife observes the husband being violent, she believes with
probability I that she faces a dissatisfied husband, and agrees to pay any transfer t, t'(1) > t.
Hence, the husband's optimal strategy is to request a transfer t = t'(l). If the wife does not
observe violence, she infers that either the husband is satisfied, or the husband is dissatisfied but
has a high cost of violence. Letting ir* denote the maximal cost of a violent husband, we derive
the wife's posterior belief that the husband is dissatisfied as
po = p(z) (I- & (,v*))/ (p(z) (I- F,; (Kr*)) + l- p(z)) < p(z).
Since tw(.) is a decreasing function, by Assumption 4, t > t%(p(z)) > t%po). Hence, the wife never
accepts the demand of a husband who does not behave violently. We now characterize the value
of the maximal cost k* for which a dissatisfied husband is indifferent between exercising
violence and obtaining the transfer tK(1) and not exercising violence and abandoning his wife.
The value x* is given by:
AC* =e(Yh +D+ t (1), xb xw,O)- Ch(O) - V (Yh+D, xh, m2). (3)
Finally, notice that the construction of the pooling equilibrium relies on the out-of-equilibrium
belief that, if the wife observes violence, she faces a satisfied husband with positive probability.
Since, by Assumption 2, satisfied husbands never beat their wives, these beliefs do not satisfy
Cho and Kreps (1 987)'s intuitive criterion. We conclude with the following Proposition.
Proposition 1. The signaling and renegotiation game admits a unique Bayesian Perfect
Equilibrium satisfying Cho and Kreps (1987) 's intuitive criterion. It is a separating equilibrium,
where dissatisfied husband whose cost of violence is lower than K* exercise domestic violence.
Dissatisfied husbands whose cost is higher than K'* and satisfied husbands do not beat their
wives. Upon observing violence, the wife 'sfamily agrees to a transfer t = t'(1). If no violence is
exercised, the wife 'sfamily rejects the husband's demand. Dissatisfied husbands whose cost is
13
higher than Kc* separate from their wives, while satisfied husbands and dissatisfied husbands
whose cost is lower than K* remain in an intact marriage.
Proposition I establishes that violence only occurs for dissatisfied husbands whose cost of
violence is lower than c*. We thus may write the conditional probability that violence is
exercised given that the husband is dissatisfied as
Pr(violencel9=O)= Fk(K*) = F,A(Uh (Yh +D+ tw(1), xh, XW, 0)- Ch(O) - (Yh+Dxh,m2)).
Since the prior probability that the husband is dissatisfied is given byp(z), we obtain
Pr(violence) =p(z) F, (Uh (Yh +D+ tw(1), xh, 0) - C()- h (Yh+D, Xh, m2)) (4)
= B(Yh, D, YW, Xh, xw z, m2)
In the Appendix, we derive the following comparative statics for the equation determining the
incidence of violence.
Proposition 2. An increase in the income of the wife 'sfamily, Y, increases the probability of
violence. An increase in the observed marriage attributes, z, and in the marriage market
conditions, m2, reduces the probability of violence. If an increase in the husband's income
reduces the probability of violence, than an increase in the dowry also reduces the probability of
violence, and the marginal effect of an increase in the dowry is larger than the marginal effect of
an increase in the husband's income.
Proposition 2 provides three clear comparative statics results on the variables YWJ z and
M2. An increase in the income of the wife's family reduces the wife's family's marginal utility of
income, thereby increasing the level of the transfer tw(l). An increase in the transfer paid makes
violence more attractive to the husband. An increase in the observed attributes of the marriage
reduces the probability that the husband is dissatisfied, thereby reducing the probability of
violence. An increase in the marriage market conditions raises the husband's incentive to separate
from his wife, reducing the probability of violence. The effect of an increase in the husband's
wealth is ambiguous, since it involves a comparison between the marginal utility of income in the
14
marriage and after separation at two different income levels. An increase in the dowry affects the
probability of violence through two channels: it raises the husband's income and reduces the
wife's income thereby reducing the level of the transfer tw(1). While the first effect cannot be
signed, the second effect is always negative. Hence, when an increase in the husband's income
results in a lower probability of violence, so does an increase in the dowry, and the marginal
effect of an increase in the dowry is larger than the marginal effect of an increase in the husband's
income. Changes in the husband's and wife's characteristics, xh and x,,, affect both the utility in
the marriage and after separation, producing ambiguous effects on the probability of violence.
3.3 Dowry Bargaining
We now turn to the initial dowry bargaining stage. Before the marriage is concluded, the
values of 0, ; z and m2 are unknown to the two families. Both families share a common prior
that the probability that the husband will be dissatisfied isp(z) and that the prior distributions of
ni z and m2 are given by F,, Fz and F, respectively. At the time of negotiation of the dowry, the
husband has a reservation utility given by R(Yh, Xh, ml), which depends on the wealth and
characteristics of his family and on the marriage market conditions at the time of the marriage,
mi. We suppose that the reservation utility is increasing in all its arguments. The wife's family
makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer to the husband's family. In computing this offer, the bride's
family takes into account the expected utility of the husband's family after the marriage. This
expected utility depends on the three possible marriage regimes: either the husband is satisfied
and stays in the marriage without receiving additional payments, or the husband is dissatisfied
and experiences a low cost of violence, extracts additional transfers and keeps the marriage intact,
or the husband is dissatisfied, experiences a high cost of violence and separates from his wife.
Formally, we write the husband's expected utility after the marriage as
E Le - f(-p(z)) e (Yh +D, Xh, xw, 1) dFz
+ 1ff K p(z) (Uk (Yh +D+ tw(l), Xh, xw, 0) - Ch(O) - K) d F, dFr, dFz
+ fffK,* p(z) h (Yh+D, Xh, m2) dF,, dFm dFz. (5)
15
In the Appendix, we show that the husband's expected utility is an increasing function of the
dowry received. Hence, the husband's family rejects any dowry offer such that E eP < R(Y,, xi,,
ml) and accepts any dowry offer such that E lt 2�R(Yh, xh, m).
Similarly, the wife's expected utility in the marriage depends on the three possible marriage
regimes and is given by
E U' f (I-p(z)) U'YW -D, xb xw) dFz
+ Ifr p(z) (UW(Yw -D - tw(I), Xh, xw) - C.) d FK dFm dFz
+ IIJ,*p(z) r F(Yh -D, xW)) d FK dFm dFz (6)
In the Appendix, we show that, if an increase in the dowry reduces the probability of violence,
the wife's expected utility is an increasing function of the dowry paid. Hence, in equilibrium, the
wife's family offers the minimal dowry that the husband accepts.
Proposition 3. If an increase in the dowry reduces the probability of violence, the dowry is
uniquely determined by R(Yh, xh, ml) = E Lt.
We denote the dowry equation by D(Yh, Y,,X x, ,, mi) and derive in the Appendix the following
comparative statics on the dowry equation.
Proposition 4. An increase in the wealth of the wife 'sfamily reduces the dowry. Better marriage
market options for men increases the dowry.
Most exogenous variables have ambiguous effects on the level of the dowry. Changes in
the husband's wealth affect simultaneously the husband's reservation utility and his expected
utility after marriage, resulting in ambiguous effects. Changes in the wife's and husband's
characteristics produce arnbiguous effects on the expected utility after marriage. The only two
variables with clear effects are the wife's family's income - an increase in the wife's family's
income raises the transfer paid, thereby increasing the husband's expected utility in the marriage
- and the marriage market conditions - an increase in the marriage market conditions raises the
husband's reservation utility, yielding an increase in the dowry.
16
4. Data and Econometric Methodology
To test the predictions from the model we use survey data collected by us from the same
caste of potters, from three villages in the South Indian State of Karnataka, viho were the focus of
the qualitative interviews. All three villages exchange brides indicating that they are all part of
the same marriage market. The survey consisted of a three part questionnaire, a family
questionnaire directed to the head of the household, a woman's questionnaire for all women
above the age of fifteen, and a husband's questionnaire. All 149 potter families in the three
villages were interviewed, which included 177 adult women, and 130 married men. After
dropping the never-married and widowed women we are left with a sample of 142 women of
which 137 answered the violence question'4. In addition to questions relating to socio-economic
characteristics and marriage transactions, all the married women were asked if they had ever been
severely physically assaulted by the husbands at any time during the marriage, along with
questions about the extent and severity of the violence. The question on the incidence of
domestic violence elicited a much more accurate response than the questions about its extent and
severity". Thus in this paper we will focus on the determinants of a binary variable indicating
whether the wife has ever been severely physically assaulted by her husband. Men were not
asked about wife-abuse in the survey, but were interviewed about it in the qualitative work. As
far as possible, all the women were interviewed by female interviewers and the men by male
interviewers.
It is clear that while our data are detailed and intimate, these advantages are traded off
with the size of the sample'6 and its representativeness. However, a more conventional sampling
frame would not have permitted us to collect sensitive information like the incidence of wife-
abuse, as we would not have established the level of trust necessary to gather such information
with reasonable accuracy.
14 The model suggests that some of these women are in bad "separated" marriages where links between the
husband's and wife's families have been severed, but where violence is absent. NVhile we have anecdotal
evidence from a sub-sample of 40 interviews suggesting that about fifteen per cent of marriages fall into
this category, the survey instrument did not include questions on the quality of the links between the two
families.
15 The questions on the extent and severity of violence were answered by only 70 per cent of the sample.
Even when the questions were answered the responses had strong interviewer effects with some
interviewers being able to elicit more complete and consistent responses than others. On other the hand,
the dichotomous question on whether a woman had ever been physically assaulted by her husband was
answered by all the respondents without significant interviewer effects.
16 This sample size is comparable to the widely analyzed ICRISAT sample, the core of which consists of
120 households from three villages.
17
We have derived three equations in the previous section for which we have provided
testable predictions:
1) The Dowry Equation:
D= D(Yh, Y., Xh, XW, mi)
2) The Violence Equation:
Pr(violence) = B(Yh, D, YW, Xh, xw, z, m2)
We estimate a linear approximation of the Dowry function by OLS. The violence
function is estimated with a Probit specification. The Violence equation B() has the possibility
of being endogenously determined with Dowries and therefore we estimate it with Instrumental
variables. The variable excluded from the Dowry equation in the first stage is the measure of
outside options in the marriage market at the time of the marriage m, 17
Most of the variables used in the three equations are directly observed, but we do not
have direct observations of Yh and Y,' the wealth of the husbands and wives families. Wealth is
difficult to measure in these villages because most of it is in the form of one or two room homes
and very small plots of land which are almost never sold'8. Thus, we use the closest proxies we
have available - the incomes of the families of the husband and the wife. Since most of the
income is in the form of agricultural output, or farm and non-farm labor, wealth and income are
highly correlated. The characteristics of the husband and wife, Xh and xw, are measured by their
years of schooling and ages at marriage, we also include their year of marriage to account for the
duration of their marriage and thus their current age. For z, the indicator of the observed
characteristics of the marriage, we use the number of male and female children of the couple.
Children of violent fathers whom we interviewed expressed a great deal of dislike of their father's
behavior and sympathized with their mother's plight. On the other hand, this is a male dominated
society, which greatly values male children. Thus, the presence of male children should increase
'7 The first stage dowry regression in the Probit-IV estimate of violence determinants includes the square of
ml, in addition to the other exogenous variables in the system. Note that ml and M2 are not collinear
(p=O. 19).
'8Plots owned by husbands families average 0.61 acres.
18
the husband's satisfaction with the marriage. For the sake of comparison we also include the
number of female children, even though their effect on the husband's satisfaction is less clear.
Outside options in the marriage market, ml and m2 are measured by ihe marriage
squeeze ratio19-the ratio of the number of women to the number men at marriageable ages
(defined as women aged 10- 19/ men aged 20-29). ml is measured at the year of the marriage
while m2 is measured ten years after the marriage. m2 is measured with a ten year lag because
we do not know the exact time when the violence occurred but our qualitative interviews suggest
that most incidences of violence occur within the first ten years of marriage. Additionally, since
the Indian census is conducted every ten years, a ten year lag permits us to obtain the value of the
marriage squeeze ratio from the next period available in the census. For bothl m2 and m2 we use
the census year closest to the year of marriage. We obtain the data from the census for Mysore
district in Karnataka State - the geographic region within which these households choose their
spouses20.
5. Econometric Results, Policy Implications and Conclusion
Table I provides a few summary statistics about the community. The families in our
sample are poor. The mean schooling of both women and men is very low, at 1.14 years for
women and 1.46 years for men. The average annual income of the wife's parents is 5,506 rupees
($625 in PPP adjusted US dollars) while that of the husband's family is 6440 rupees (PPP $731),
but note that the standard deviation of the wife's family's income is very large at 6572 rupees
compared to 784 rupees for the husband's family income. One possible reason for this large
variation is measurement error because we did not interview the parents of the wife directly, but
asked the wife to give us an estimate of her parent's income. Fertility levels are rather low, the
average family has 1.18 male children and 1.2 female children.
The average dowry paid is 11,840 rupees with a standard deviation of about six times
that. The large variation is mainly because dowries are both negative and positive since this
community has moved from paying brideprices (negative dowries) to dowries. The average of
'9 See Rao(1993) for a more detailed explanation of this measure, and Bhat and lHalli (1999) for a extended
discussion on past and future trends in the availability of grooms in India.
20 Ooru and Halli villages are located in Mysore district. Beedu village is in Coorg district but arranges
marriages with families exclusively within Mysore district. We should note that the marriage squeeze
variable is an approximation of the true availability of spouses for the potter families because it measures
the ratio for all endogamous groups in the district. However, because it is largely driven by reductions in
19
the positive dowries is 39,355 rupees with a standard deviation of 82,993 rupees. The dowry
information is reasonably accurate since dowries are the single largest lifetime expense and
respondents tended to have a good memory of how much was spent. Note that 23% of women
said that their husbands had beaten them at some time during the marriage. This proportion is
considerably higher than the incidence in the US where one in six women report having been
struck by their husbands during the course of a marriage (Gelles and Straus, 1989). The mean
year of marriage is 1974, though marriages range from 1950 through 1992. The marriage
squeeze ratio averages 1.06 in this sample indicating that there is a slight surplus of women in the
marriage market due to younger cohorts being of larger size than older cohorts because of
increases in population growth rates. The ratio averages 1.08 for the tenth year of the marriages
suggesting that the surplus has been increasing with time.
Table 2(a) presents OLS estimates of the dowry equation. The theoretical model
predicted ambiguous effects for all the exogenous variables here with the exception of the income
of the wife's family which was negative and the marriage market parameter which was positive.
Most of the estimated coefficients in the dowry regression are not significant with the exception
of the marriage squeeze ratio which has a positive impact on the dowry and is significant at the 10
per cent level. A 0.01 increase in the ratio raises the dowry by 3000 rupees indicating a rather
large effect. The income of the wife's family has a negative coefficient as hypothesized by the
theoretical model, but it is not significantly different from zero.
Tables 2(b) presents estimates from the Probit-IV specification of the violence equation.
Here a number of effects are consistent with the theoretical predictions. A 10,000 rupee increase
over the mean of the wife's parents' annual income increases violence by 3.3 per cent. The
observed and positively valued characteristics of the marriage z, that we measure by the number
of male children, also has the predicted effect with an additional make child reducing violence by
10 per cent at the mean. This is consistent with the notion that more male children reduce the
chances that the husband is dissatisfied. A 10,000 rupee increase in predicted net dowries
measured at the mean reduces the probability of violence by 5 per cent, while the husband's
family's income has a negative effect which is not significant. This is consistent with the
prediction of the theoretical model that the direction of the impact of dowries and husband's
income on violence should be the same, but that the dowry effect should be greater than.the effect
of the husband's income.
mortality and fertility in the region, it should serve as a good proxy for spouse availability among the
potters.
20
While the human capital variables did not have clear predictions, husband's schooling
has an interesting impact on violence. A one year increase in the mean value of husband's
schooling increases the risk of violence by almost four per cent. This suggests that the positive
effects of schooling on violence - by raising the transfer the wife's family is willing to give and by
raising the husband's gains to marriage, dominate the negative effect - increasing the husband's
welfare after separation. None of the other variables have significant effects.
To think about the policy implications of these results, it is important to appreciate the
extent to which most Indian women do not have options outside of marriage. Marriage, for
women, is never a matter of choice but is almost entirely driven by social norms and the
preferences of parents. Consequently, the burden of any adversity in the marriage market, or
within a marriage after it has been arranged, is almost exclusively borne by the wife or bride. As
other work has demonstrated, it is in this context that a shortage of grooms in the marriage market
causes dowries to rise substantially. If it were possible for a woman to opt to marry at a much
later age, or choose not to marry at all, or to divorce her husband if the marriage were
unsatisfactory, dowries would not rise, though the number of single or divorced women might.
Thus, providing opportunities for women outside marriage and the marriage market
would significantly improve their well-being by allowing them to leave an abusive husband, by
finding a way of "bribing" him to stop the abuse, or by presenting a credible threat that achieves
the same objective. In more specific terms, the main opportunities for women outside the
marriage market would be in the labor market. Policies that invest in the hulman capital of
women could make a difference but would be more effective if job opportunities for women were
also provided. Thus, income-generation programs and micro-lending strategies focused on
women could be of great value.
To conclude, in this case-study we have demonstrated that violence can be used as an
instrument to redistribute resources. The example we focus on is the highly publicized link
between the marriage market and wife-abuse in the Indian sub-continent. lTo examine this, we
employ an approach that combines the usual methods of economics with ethnographic techniques
borrowed from anthropology. We construct a non-cooperative bargaining and signaling model of
dowries and domestic violence which is informed by the ethnographic evidence. Predictions
from this models are tested with survey data gathered from the same population examined in the
in-depth interviews. We find that for the most part the econometric evidence is consistent with
the theory. In Probit-IV estimates of violence we find that husbands are mrore likely to beat their
wives when the wife's family is rich because there are more resources to extract and the returns
are greater. We also find that larger dowries reduce the probability of violence. A husband's
21
greater satisfaction with the marriage indicated by higher numbers of male children, reduces the
probability of violence. Thus, it is likely that aspects of violent behavior are strongly linked to
economic incentives and deserve greater attention from economists.
22
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