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Kin investment in wage-labor economies

Effects on child and marriage market outcomes

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Abstract

Various human groups, from food foragers to inner-city urban Americans, have used widespread sharing of resources through kin networks as a means of buffering themselves against fluctuations in resource availability in their environments. This paper addresses the effects of progressive incorporation into a wage-labor economy on the benefits of traditional kin networks for two social classes in urban South India. Predictions regarding the effects of kin network wealth, education, and size on child and spouse characteristics and methods of financing marriages are tested using various regression techniques. Despite the rapid growth of participation in a wage-labor economy, it is found that kin network characteristics still have an important impact on investment behavior among families in Bangalore in both social classes. Network wealth is found to have a positive effect on child and spouse characteristics, and large networks are found to act as significant drains on family resources. However, the results for education are broadly consistent with an interpretation of increasing family autonomy as parents’ education has a far stronger influence on child and spouse characteristics across categories than network education does. Finally, professional-class parents are found to prefer financing marriages using formal mechanisms such as savings and bank loans while working-class parents preferentially finance marriages using credit from relatives and friends.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington, Box 353412, 98195, Seattle, WA

    Mary K. Shenk

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  1. Mary K. Shenk
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Correspondence to Mary K. Shenk.

Additional information

This research was largely funded by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant, Award ID No. BCS-0001523. Additional funding came from the Ruby Weitzer Morris Memorial Fellowship.

Mary K. Shenk recently completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Washington where she is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology supported by a three-year individual Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from NICHD. Her theoretical interests include the evolutionary economics of marriage, parental investment, and property transmission systems, and her fieldwork focuses on the social and economic strategies of different caste and class groups in urban South India.

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Shenk, M.K. Kin investment in wage-labor economies. Hum Nat 16, 81–113 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-005-1008-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-005-1008-1

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