Whose Education Matters? An Analysis Of Inter Caste Marriages In India

Endogamy or intra-caste marriage is one of the most resilient of all the caste based practices in India. Even in 2011, the rate of inter caste marriages in India was as low as 5.82%. In this paper we explore whether education has any relationship with this age-old practice of marrying within one's own caste. Using a nationally representative data set, the Indian Human Development Survey, we find that, in sharp contrast with the findings in the existing literature on out-marriages in the Western countries, education levels of the spouses themselves do not have any association with the likelihood of their own marriage being an inter caste one. However, couples with a more educated mother of the husband have a significantly higher probability of being in an inter caste marriage. Increase in years of education of the husband’s mother by 10 years would lead to an increase in the probability of inter caste marriage by 1.86 percentage points which is equivalent to approximately 36 percent of the sample mean. Our analysis highlights the importance of recognizing the institution of arranged marriages in any analysis of Indian marriage markets