2025-06-29-世界银行-财富_婚姻与性别选择（英）_57页_828kb

Policy Research Working Paper 11147: Wealth, Marriage, and Sex Selection

Authors: Girija Borker, Jan Eeckhout, Nancy Luke, Shantidani Minz, Kaivan Munshi, Soumya Swaminathan
Series: Development Economics
Date: June 2025

Introduction to Sex Selection Phenomenon

Sex selection through female feticide and infanticide is a significant issue in India, deeply rooted in son preference and daughter aversion linked to dowry payments.

• Son Preference: Parents desire a male heir for inheritance or old-age support.
• Daughter Aversion: Dowries make girls less desirable economically.
  This paper integrates both mechanisms into a unified model of the Indian marriage institution.

Model Development

Key Mechanisms and Results

The model posits that sex selection arises due to three institutional features of Indian marriage: endogamous marriages, patrilocal living, and dowry payments.

1. Daughter Aversion (Marriage Market Mechanism):

   • Parents transfer wealth through嫁妆, which indirectly bequeaths assets but also acts as a market-clearing price.
   • Sex selection occurs if:
     • No commitment in marriage payments.
     • Weaker bargaining position for daughters in marital homes (β ≥ 2/3).
     • Strict social norms requiring girls to marry.

2. Son Preference:

   • Altruistic parents prefer boys due to post-marriage support and inheritance benefits.

Empirical Contribution:
The model provides micro-foundations for daughter aversion, distinguishing it from other explanations based on caste/wealth.

Empirical Analysis

Marriage Patterns in Rural India (South India Community Health Study)

• Data Source: SICHS covers 1.1 million individuals across 298,000 rural households.
• Marriage Practices:
  • Exclusively endogamous (98% marry within caste) and patrilocal (girls move to husbands' homes).
  • High dowries (typically 3x annual income) correlate strongly with hypergamy (relative wealth effect).

Sex Selection Variance by Wealth

• Sex selection (gender imbalance) decreases as wealth decreases within castes (inverted-U relationship).
• Critical Findings:
  • 48% of sex selection stems from the marriage market mechanism.
  • Policies targeting low-income households may worsen bias through general equilibrium dowry increases.

Policy Implications

• Cash Transfer Programs: Conditional transfers to parents shift timing of incentives but do not reduce bias due to inefficient dowry mechanisms.
• Direct Transfers to Girls: Effective alternatives — provide transfers directly to adult married women circumventing familial misallocation.

Key Findings Summary

• Daughter aversion linked to marriage market inefficiencies (dowry) and hypergamy (richer girls marry up, increasing wealth gap).
• Sex selection pervasive across all wealth levels, increasing with relative wealth at caste level.
• Novel control function methodology robustly isolates relative wealth effects.

Conclusion: Addressing sex selection requires marrying cash incentives with direct asset transfers post-marriage (bamboo ladder strategy).