Bhalotra, Sonia and Chakravarty, Abhishek and Gulesci, Selim (2020) The Price of Gold: Dowry and Death in India. Journal of Development Economics, 143. p. 102413. DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.102413
Bhalotra, Sonia and Chakravarty, Abhishek and Gulesci, Selim (2020) The Price of Gold: Dowry and Death in India. Journal of Development Economics, 143. p. 102413. DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.102413
Bhalotra, Sonia and Chakravarty, Abhishek and Gulesci, Selim (2020) The Price of Gold: Dowry and Death in India. Journal of Development Economics, 143. p. 102413. DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.102413
Abstract
We provide evidence that dowry costs motivate son-preferring behaviors in India. Since gold is an integral part of dowry, we study parental responses to shocks in the world gold price. Exploiting monthly variation in gold prices across 35 years we find that monthly changes in gold prices lead to an increase in girl relative to boy neonatal mortality and that surviving girls are shorter. After the introduction of prenatal sex determination technology, we find that gold price shocks during pregnancy increase female foeticide.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | dowry, gold, son preference, missing girls, neonatal mortality, commodity price shocks |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences > Institute for Social and Economic Research |
| SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
| Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
| Date Deposited: | 12 Nov 2019 12:46 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Sep 2022 19:36 |
| URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/25909 |
Available files
Filename: paper_JDEfinal.pdf
Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0