Watta Satta: Bride Exchange and Women’s Welfare in Rural Pakistan Hanan G. Jacoby and Ghazala Mansuri∗ October 2008 (revised) Abstract Do marital institutions serve to limit inefficiency within marriage? We study the pervasive custom of watta satta in rural Pakistan, a bride exchange between families coupled with a mutual threat of retaliation. Watta satta can be seen as a mechanism for coordinating the actions of two sets of in-laws, each of whom wish to restrain their son-in-laws but who only have the ability to restrain their sons. Our empirical results corroborate this view. Marital discord, as measured by estrangement, domestic abuse, and wife’s mental health, is significantly lower in watta sattas versus ‘conventional’ marriages, but only after accounting for selection bias. This beneficial effect cannot be explained by endogamy, a marriage pattern associated with watta satta. ∗Development Research Group, The World Bank, 1818 H St. NW, Washington, DC 20433. Jacoby e-mail:
[email protected]; Mansuri e-mail:
[email protected]. We have benefitted from comments received at the 2005 NEUDC (Providence) and BREAD (Cambridge) conferences, as well as at the 2006 Mini-Conference on Development (Quebec City) and the DECRG Poverty and Applied Micro Seminar at the World Bank. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the World Bank, its executive directors, or the countries they represent. "[Watta satta] means that you will give a daughter and receive the same in return. It also implies that if our daughter will be in pain, we will treat your daughter the same way." (woman from Badeen, Sindh)1 1Introduction Marriage is perhaps the epitome of an incomplete contract; its terms can never be fully specified ex-ante or enforced ex-post.