The impact of market integration on arranged marriages in Matlab, Bangladesh

Abstract

Success in marriage markets has lasting impacts on women's wellbeing. By arranging marriages, parents exert financial and social powers to influence spouse characteristics and ensure optimal marriages. While arranging marriages is a major focus of parental investment, marriage decisions are also a source of conflict between parents and daughters in which parents often have more power. The process of market integration may alter parental investment strategies, however, increasing children's bargaining power and reducing parents’ influence over children's marriage decisions. We use data from a market integrating region of Bangladesh to (1) describe temporal changes in marriage types, (2) identify which women enter arranged marriages, and (3) determine how market integration affects patterns of arranged marriage. Most women's marriages were arranged, with love marriages more recent. We found few predictors of who entered arranged versus love marriages, and family-level market integration did not predict marriage type at the individual-level. However, based on descriptive findings, and findings relating women's and father's education to groom characteristics, we argue that at the society-level market integration has opened a novel path in which daughters use their own status, gained via parental investments, to facilitate good marriages under conditions of reduced parental assistance or control.

Socioeconomic benefits and limited parent–offspring disagreement in arranged marriages in Nepal

“…Many young women in Dhading expressed a desire to finish school, build a career, and become more financially independent before marriage. They may see these activities as a way to increase their own status, which could be converted to better matches (Schaffnit et al, 2022 ), more extensive kin networks (Shenk, Towner, Voss, & Alam, 2016 ), more parental investment and better outcomes for their children (Alami et al, 2020 ). Because, owing to legal changes and societal trends, marriage age has been steadily increasing in this community (an offspring preference), this could indicate that more compromise between parents and their children over marriage age may be occurring in recent years.…”

Gendered conflict in the human family

“…Given the absence of similar redistributive mechanisms in patrilineal groups, they speculate that wealth differences will become relatively more apparent with greater economic development. Schaffnit et al (2023) and Agey et al (2023) address the influence of market integration on patterns of arranged marriage, a site of both potential parent-offspring conflict and gendered conflict (as arranged marriage more often involves coercion of wives and daughters than husbands and sons). Drawing on data from Bangladesh, Schaffnit et al (2023) find that contrary to their expectations, markers of family market integration do not predict whether women enter an arranged or love marriage.…”

“…In an effort to address these issues, we purposely sought out contributions led by authors from LMICs (Akurugu et al, 2022 ; Baraka et al, 2022 ; He et al, 2022 ), or where research is conducted in LMICs in collaboration and co-authorship with research institutions and/or scholars of the same nationality/cultural background as the study participants (Agey et al, 2023 ; Mattison et al, 2023 ; Schaffnit et al, 2023 ). We also asked all contributors to consider the criteria they used for authorship decisions, referring them to Morton et al's ( 2022 ) guidelines on promoting equitable authorship (including avoidance of ‘token’ authorship).…”

“…A second emergent theme is presented by several papers in the collection addressing how patterns of gendered conflict are being influenced by market integration (Agey et al, 2023 ; Mattison et al, 2023 ; Schaffnit et al, 2023 ). Mattison et al ( 2023 ), for example, incorporate a consideration of matrilineal vs. patrilineal kinship to provide a fresh perspective on long-running debates about the impact of market integration on wealth inequality.…”

Cross-cousin marriage among Tsimane forager–horticulturalists during demographic transition and market integration

“…In contrast, declines in cousin marriage have also been linked to economic changes that facilitate more resource independence for women – e.g. increased levels of education, availability of wage labour and engagement in a market economy appear to attenuate the frequency of cousin marriage, rendering intensive kinship systems and kin-based alliances less beneficial (Assaf & Khawaja, 2009 ; Bras et al, 2009 ; Islam, 2018 ; Brennan, 1981 ; Koc, 2008 ; Shenk et al, 2016 ; Schaffnit et al, 2022 ).…”