Lin interviewed for story on Indian marriage market
Shreya Kaitan, writing in IndiaSpend, wonders why "[r]ising levels of education among Indian women have not empowered them to seek spouses who are equally educated." One of her sources was a paper written by MPRC Student Research Affiliate Zhiyong Lin and co-authored by Faculty Associates Feinian Chen and Sonalde Desai.
In a working paper, "The Emergence of Educational Hypogamy in India," the authors attribute marriages of more highly educated women to lower educated men from more privileged families to multiple social and economic factors such as caste constraints, lower female participation in the labour market, lower income for women’s work, especially for those with an Arts degree, and limited freedom for women to choose a spouse.
“Only increasing women’s education does not shift gender inequality,” Lin told Kaitan. In India, “power in marriage, power in marriage selection and socio-economic independence” do not automatically come from education.