Distance and Marriage Migration

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyse the pattern of the distribution of distance associated with marriage migration. Islam (2008) studied the pattern of marriage migration through a polynomial model to describe the functional relationship of distance with marriage migration and found satisfactory results with the Bangladesh data. However, the pattern of distribution of distance involved with marriage migration in other countries especially in India where majority belonged to Hindu religion may be different than that of Bangladesh. Due to non-existence of endogamy (cross-cousin marriages) among Hindus, mean distance associated with a marriage is supposed to be much higher than Bangladesh, a Muslim country. This paper tried to test the suitability of polynomial model on Indian data, collected at three different time periods i.e. in 1978 and 1984 and in 2002. It was found that the Polynomial model as discussed by Islam (2008) fitted to the distribution of distance associated with marriage migration in Indian situation too under certain standardised situations. The marriage field was found much higher in India than that of Bangladesh. Also an increasing trend of marriage field was noted in India over time.