1. Modern Marriage in a Traditional Society: The Influence of College Education on Marriage in India.
- Author
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Vikram, Kriti
- Subjects
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WOMEN'S education , *MARRIAGE , *AUTONOMY (Psychology) , *SELF-efficacy , *SPOUSES , *LOGISTIC regression analysis , *AGE distribution , *DECISION making , *INTERPERSONAL relations , *EDUCATIONAL attainment - Abstract
India has witnessed a dramatic expansion of higher education, and women have emerged as noteworthy winners in the process. This paper focuses on the role of female college education on four dimensions of marriage: age at marriage, autonomy in the choice of spouse, work and financial empowerment, and quality of marital relationship. The study uses a sample of 35,561 currently married women from the 2011-2012 wave of the nationally representative India Human Development Survey (IHDS). It demonstrates that higher education, particularly college education, enables women to lead lives substantively different from their less-educated peers. College-educated women marry at later ages, enjoy greater autonomy in choosing their husbands, and have a more egalitarian relationship with their spouses. Furthermore, the study finds that educational homogamy and hypogamy afford greater autonomy to women. Even without a concomitant increase in labor force participation, college education among women appears to have a transformative effect on marriage in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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