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We study how aggregate economic conditions affect the timing of marriage, and particularly child marriage, in Sub-Saharan Africa and in India. In both regions, substantial monetary or in-kind transfers occur with marriage: bride price across Sub-Saharan Africa and dowry in India. In a simple equilibrium model of the marriage market in which parents choose when their children marry, income shocks affect the age of marriage because marriage payments are a source of consumption smoothing, particularly for a woman’s family. As predicted by our model, we show that droughts, which reduce annual crop yields by 10 to 15% and aggregate income by 4 to 5%, have opposite effects on the marriage behavior of a sample of 400,000 women in the two regions: in Sub-Saharan Africa they increase the annual hazard into child marriage by 3%, while in India droughts reduce such a hazard by 4%. Changes in the age of marriage due to droughts are associated with changes in fertility, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, and with declines in observed marriage payments. Our results indicate that the age of marriage responds to short-term changes in aggregate economic conditions and that marriage payments determine the sign of this response. This suggests that, in order to design successful policies to combat child marriage and improve investments in daughters’ human capital, it is crucial to understand the economic role of marriage market institutions.

We document an important consequence of bride price, a payment made by the groom to the bride’s family at marriage. Revisiting Indonesia’s school construction program, we find that among ethnic groups without the custom, it had no effect on girls’ schooling. Among ethnic groups with the custom, it had large positive effects. We show (theoretically and empirically) that this is because a daughter’s education, by increasing the amount of money parents receive at marriage, generates an additional incentive for parents to educate their daughters. We replicate these findings in Zambia, a country that had a similar large-scale school construction program.

Objective This study examines trends over several decades in bridewealth marriage and analyzes the association of bridewealth with women's experiences in marriage in a rural sub‐Saharan setting. Background Bridewealth—payments from the groom's to the bride's family as part of the marriage process—has long been a central element of kinship and marriage systems in patrilineal sub‐Saharan Africa. This payment, which symbolizes the transfer of sexual and reproductive rights from the wife's to the husband's family, is grounded in a collectivist‐oriented family system that closely ties women's status and value to their reproductive capacity. Method The study draws on population‐based longitudinal survey data collected in 2006, 2009, and 2011 from 1,552 women in rural Mozambique. Multivariable regression was used to investigate whether year of marriage predicts being in a bridewealth marriage and whether bridewealth status predicts marital dissolution, women's decision‐making autonomy, women's work outside of subsistence agriculture, or modern contraceptive use. Results The proportion of marriages involving bridewealth payment has declined over time. While no difference by bridewealth status exists in women's autonomy levels or modern contraceptive use, women in bridewealth marriages are less likely to divorce over a 5‐year period and less likely to work outside of subsistence agriculture, net of other factors. Conclusion These findings reflect the complexity of a modernizing marriage system. With the decline of bridewealth marriage, its meaning has evolved, becoming increasingly indicative of individual wealth and status rather than family control.

Approximately seventy-five percent of the world’s population lives in countries where asset exchange upon marriage is obligatory. Rising brideprice—money or gifts provided to a woman’s family by the groom and his family as part of marriage arrangements—is a common if overlooked catalyst of violent conflict. In patrilineal (and some matrilineal) societies where brideprice is practiced, a man’s social status is directly connected to his marital status. Brideprice acts as a flat tax that is prone to sudden and swift increases. As a result, rising brideprice can create serious marriage market distortions that prevent young men, especially those who are poor or otherwise marginalized, from marrying. This phenomenon is especially evident in polygamous societies, where wealthy men can afford more than one bride. These distortions incentivize extra-legal asset accumulation, whether through ad hoc raiding or organized violence. In such situations, rebel and terror groups may offer to pay brideprice—or even provide brides—to recruit new members. Descriptive case studies of Boko Haram in Nigeria and various armed groups in South Sudan demonstrate these linkages, while an examination of Saudi Arabia’s cap on brideprice and its efforts to arrange low-cost mass weddings illustrates the ways in which governments can intervene in marriage markets to help prevent brideprice-related instability. The trajectory of brideprice is an important but neglected early indicator of societal instability and violent conflict, underscoring that the situation and security of women tangibly affect national security.

While the understanding of child marriage in Ghana has improved in recent decades, scholarship on this important topic remains scant, especially research examining the reasons for child marriage across socio-cultural contexts. We apply the social-ecological model to explore the drivers of child marriage in the Bawku West District in Ghana. After purposive sampling, we conducted in-depth interviews with 15 women who married before the age of 18 and thematic content analysis to summarize the text. The findings reveal that child marriage is commonplace in the study area and has several drivers, including community/societal factors such as poverty and bride price payment. Other drivers include teenage pregnancy and low educational levels. The results corroborate the social-ecological model in which child marriage has multiple levels of influence. Findings suggest that addressing child marriage in Ghana requires practical solutions across all sectors and levels. Highlights Female child marriage remains unacceptably high in Ghana. Research examining reasons for child marriage in Ghana is limited. This study examined reasons for child marriage in the Bawku West District of Ghana. Factors at multiple levels of the social-ecological system influence child marriage. Preventing child marriage requires practical solutions across all sectors and levels.

This paper draws on qualitative research in Jiwaka Province, in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), to examine the changing nature of marriage in that context. In particular, it examines how changes in the practice of brideprice have been associated with an increase in intimate partner violence. Violence, a relational process, is to be understood in the context of the customary unequal power relations between men and women. It is argued that men in the highlands of PNG see any gain in power for women as a loss for themselves, and so actively resist it. Men who see their power over women challenged resort to the discourse of brideprice, arguing that the payment of brideprice gives them absolute authority over wives. A good understanding of the norms that sanction violence is a vital step in developing interventions to prevent violence.

The payment of bridewealth or lobola is a longstanding cultural practice that has persisted in South Africa despite significant societal shifts over the past two decades. Lobola has always been a complex and contested practice that both reinforces gender inequalities and, at the same time, provides status to women and legitimacy to marriages. In this paper, we describe rural South African women’s perceptions of lobola, their experiences related to marriage and lobola, and how they reconfigure lobola to fit within modern life course aspirations and trajectories. We draw on interviews with 43 women aged 18–55 in rural South Africa to examine desires related to lobola and the meanings of lobola given current social, economic, and health (HIV) conditions in rural areas. Our findings indicate that lobola offers women a complex set of benefits and liabilities. Although women value the support, social status, and respectability lobola offers, they also lament how lobola curtails their freedom to pursue education and limits their autonomy from husbands as well as in-laws. Women also view lobola as offering a sense of security amidst the uncertainty of the local political economy and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We conclude that the way women incorporate lobola into their desires and plans reflects tension between the expectations and aspirations of “modern” women in a post-apartheid context in which rights feature prominently but economic security is not guaranteed, and cultural scripts reinforce longstanding gender norms but also ensure social support.

Resumen: Cuando los futuros Reyes Católicos se casaron en 1469, doña Isabel recibió varios territorios como arras matrimoniales. Sin embargo, algunos de los señoríos concedidos no formaban parte de esta dote, sino de una concesión vitalicia. Esto se debía a un privilegio de Pedro IV para quitar el señorío de Tárrega a su madrasta, Leonor de Castilla. Posteriormente tres reinas recibieron el mismo señorío, todas como donación vitalicia. Resulta especialmente interesante el caso de Isabel la Católica porque lo recibió siendo aún princesa de Castilla y Aragón, y generó unos documentos excepcionales desde un punto de vista diplomático durante sus primeros años como señora de Tárrega.

Persistent brideprice inflation has been linked to greater political violence. However, empirically testing this argument is complicated by the paucity of data on brideprice. We argue that despite the lack of over-time brideprice data, one can proxy for variation in marriage markets using changes to population, economic growth, and marriage rates themselves, thereby offering a clearer test of the brideprice–violence relationship. Our analysis suggests that there is little empirical support for such a relationship, and concludes that the previous support was largely due to data limitations and omitted confounds.

Among the eight forms of marriage described by the Dharmaśāstric texts, two are strictly interrelated with each other, i.e., Ārṣa and Āsura, both linked to a metaphorical (by giving one or two pairs of oxen to the maiden’s father) or actual purchase of the bride (by exchanging wealth) and respectively considered legitimate (Ārṣa) and illegitimate (Āsura). This paper analyses the formation process of these two marriage forms, which derive from a previous – single and legitimate – marriage by bride price ( ). The Dharmaśāstric theorisation of marriage rites represents a frame that does not correspond to what can be reconstructed of marriage from earlier Vedic texts, where marriage by purchase is described in positive terms. The split into Ārṣa and Āsura marriages, which took place in the Late Vedic period, can be interpreted as a Brahmanical attempt to orthodoxise marriage by purchase by substituting the bride price with a ritual gift (Ārṣa) and, at the same time, to condemn its oldest form by declaring it as illegitimate (Āsura). However, there is evidence from Dharmaśāstric and non-Dharmaśāstric (i.e., epic and Purāṇic) texts as well as – even though with minor relevance – from Megasthenes’ account of Ancient Indian marriage that the sale of daughters continued to be a practised custom and, despite the hermeneutical efforts of some passages (e.g., ĀpDh II, 13, 11), the Ārṣa marriage was actually felt as a purchase.