UC San Diego

Why is marriage between relatives common throughout the world? Consanguineous marriage was commonplace throughout human history, but became increasingly rare in the developed world beginning in the 1800’s. For large swaths of the world from Morocco to Indonesia, it is still ubiquitous.

This project investigates the theory that women use consanguineous marriage to mitigate their exposure to Intimate Partner Violence. Marrying relatives, particularly first cousins, provides women with an ex ante information gathering mechanism and an ex post behavior enforcement mechanism, both of which serve to lower the amount of violence women are exposed to.

Observational data taken from USAID’s Demographic and Health Surveys confirms the expected result that consanguinity and Intimate Partner Violence are negatively correlated in three of the four countries studied—Pakistan, Egypt, and Jordan. In India, however, the two are positively linked. Relying on previous literature, I speculate that the reason behind this divergence lies in dowry practices in India.