Who marries Whom? Marital Homogamy across Marriage Types in India

Using the nationally representative India Human Development Survey (2005), this paper studies marital homogamy by caste and class across marriage types in India. Our hypothesis is that if kin or extended family is involved in arranging a marriage, they are then also likely to follow the traditional prescriptions of marrying within their caste. At the other end, we expect that people who describe themselves as having a "love marriage" are people who are less inclined to follow tradition by marrying within their caste. Like caste, social class is important as a system of stratification in capitalist India. While social class is not as easily tracked by discerning the dictates of tradition, we expect that the association between marriage type and marital homogamy to work in a comparable manner. Preliminary cross tabulations support the hypothesis that love marriages are both less likely to be within the same caste and class than parent arranged ones. We examine this association further in a regression framework, controlling for background characteristics such as education levels, caste, income levels, and region. We also theorize that it is important to understand the role of cultural narratives in order to grasp the association between marriages and homogeneity.