Marriage Payments and Women's Bargaining Power in Rural Bangladesh
Mansoor, N.
Journal of Demographic Economics 84(1): 79-105
2018
ISSN/ISBN: 2054-0892 Document Number: 679145
: This study examines the postmarriage bargaining power of women- specifically, their decision-making power with regard to fertility- vis-à-vis imbalances in matching in the marriage market. Applying a multinomial logit model to data on rural Bangladesh for 1998/99, the study gauges women's relative empowerment: (i) at the time of marriage (measured by the bride price as a share of total marriage payments) and (ii) postmarriage (measured by women's use of the contraceptive pill). The empirical findings reveal that a higher bride price (as a share of total household marriage payments) has three main outcomes: it increases the predicted probability of women (i) using the contraceptive pill, (ii) spacing births further apart, and (iii) choosing to have fewer children.