Publication: Watta Satta: Bride Exchange and Women's Welfare in Rural Pakistan
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Date
2010
ISSN
00028282
Published
2010
Author(s)
Jacoby, Hanan G.
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Abstract
Can marriage institutions limit marital inefficiency? We study the pervasive custom of watta satta in rural Pakistan, a bride exchange between families coupled with a mutual threat of retaliation. Watta satta can be seen as a mechanism for coordinating the actions of two sets of parents, each wishing to restrain their son-in-law. We find that marital discord, as measured by estrangement, domestic abuse, and wife's mental health, is indeed significantly lower in watta satta versus "conventional" marriage, but only after accounting for selection bias. These benefits cannot be explained by endogamy, a marriage pattern associated with watta satta.
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Publication Watta Satta : Bride Exchange and Women's Welfare in Rural Pakistan(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-02)In a setting where husbands wield considerable coercive power, forms of marriage should adapt to protect the interests of women and their families. The authors study the pervasive marriage custom of watta satta in rural Pakistan, a bride exchange between families coupled with a mutual threat of retaliation. They show that watta satta may be a mechanism to coordinate the actions of two sets of in-laws, each of whom wish to restrain their sons-in-law but who only have the ability to restrain their sons. The authors' empirical results support this view. The likelihood of marital inefficiency, as measured by estrangement, domestic abuse, and wife's mental health, is significantly lower in watta satta arrangements as compared with conventional marriages, but only after properly accounting for selection.Publication The Importance of Being Wanted(2010)We identify birth wantedness as a source of better child outcomes. In Vietnam, the year of birth is widely believed to determine success. As a result, cohorts born in auspicious years are 12 percent larger. Comparing siblings with one another, those of auspicious cohorts are found to have two extra months of schooling. The Vietnamese horoscope being gender-specific, this difference will be shown to be driven by birth planning. Children born in auspicious years are more likely to have been planned, thus benefitting from a more favorable growth environment.Publication The Implications of Changing Educational and Family Circumstances for Children's Grade Progression in Rural Pakistan : 1997-2004(2009)We assess factors affecting primary and middle school dropout in rural Punjab and NorthWest Frontier Province over 6 years (1997-2004). These data are unique in a developing-country setting in longitudinally tracking changes in both school and household environments. While grade retention has improved, girls' dropout rates remain fairly high. Results suggest the importance of both household and school factors. For girls, arrival in the family of an unwanted birth in the last 6 years and enrollment in a government (not private) primary school significantly increase the likelihood of dropout, whereas availability of post-primary schooling, having a mother who attended school, and living in a better-off household reduce the probability of dropout. For boys, school quality, measured by the percent of residential teachers in the primary school, and living in a more developed community significantly reduce the probability of dropping out; loss of household remittances significantly increases the likelihood of dropout.Publication Crossing Boundaries : Gender, Caste and Schooling in Rural Pakistan(2011-06-01)Can communal heterogeneity explain persistent educational inequities in developing countries? The paper uses a novel data-set from rural Pakistan that explicitly recognizes the geographic structure of villages and the social makeup of constituent hamlets to show that demand for schooling is sensitive to the allocation of schools across ethnically fragmented communities. The analysis focuses on two types of social barriers: stigma based on caste affiliation and female seclusion that is more rigidly enforced outside a girl's own hamlet. Results indicate a substantial decrease in primary school enrollment rates for girls who have to cross hamlet boundaries to attend, irrespective of school distance, an effect not present for boys. However, low-caste children, both boys and girls, are deterred from enrolling when the most convenient school is in a hamlet dominated by high-caste households. In particular, low-caste girls, the most educationally disadvantaged group, benefit from improved school access only when the school is also caste-concordant. A policy experiment indicates that providing schools in low-caste dominant hamlets would increase overall enrollment by almost twice as much as a policy of placing a school in every unserved hamlet, and would do so at one-sixth of the cost.Publication Race Determinants of Wage Gaps in Colombia(2008)This paper examines the presence of wage gaps by race in Colombia. Information contained in the country's 2003 Living Standard Survey indicates that Afro-Colombian minorities--specifically, working age males--earn on average 6.4% less hourly wages than their non-Afro counterparts. In order to explain these differences, standard Mincerian equations are estimated. No statistical evidence of race discrimination in wages is obtained when controls for education levels, age, experience, geographical location, informality, and family size are included in the model. The most important statistically significant determinant of wages obtained was education levels. The results however do not rule out the existence of discriminatory practices in earlier stages in life that determine the quantity and quality of education as well as participation in the labor market. This result is corroborated by estimation of poverty and race. In this context, public policies that reduced differences in human capital endowments amongst Colombians of different ethnicities will contribute to decrease racial wage gaps.
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