| Abstract |
Brideprice—a marital wealth transfer from a groom to his bride’s parents—has been practiced in many of today’s developed countries but has been abandoned as these countries experience economic and social development. Until now, little has been known about exactly what has contributed to the decline in brideprice practice. We provide the first evidence on one important factor explaining this historical transformation. Based on the regression kink design framework exploiting primary education reform in Uganda, we find that female education reduces the probability of a brideprice payment. This finding suggests that female education is one of the factors facilitating cultural decline and helps explain the disappearance of brideprice practice in contemporary high-income countries and its current decline in Africa. As a possible mechanism of this cultural shift, we consider the tradeoff for the bride’s parents between altruistic utility from the daughter’s future quality of marital life and an immediate brideprice payment, as well as the relative bargaining power between the bride and the groom within the marital relationship. We do not find any evidence that the human capital compensation hypothesis or assortative matching explains the decline in brideprice practice.
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