Marital Quality and Spousal Choice: An Indian Scenario

Omkar Joshi1, Sonalde Desai2 and Reeve Vanneman3

1. Introduction and Background

Marital Quality is an important aspect of study of nuptiality. Sociologists and demographers have
studied various dimensions of marital quality, its determinants and the impacts of marital quality
on other demographic behaviour like fertility, health and wellbeing. There is a good body of
literature documenting that marital quality has an influence on health and well-being. Williams
(2003) show that higher marital quality is associated with lower depression. Wickrama et. al
(1997) posit that a good marriage has a protective effect on the married partners from physical
illness. Umberson et. al (2006) show that there is a relationship between self-rated health and
marital quality.

Apart from the above mentioned effect of the marital quality on health and well-being, it is an
important topic in itself. Despite being the topic of importance, most of the literature on marital
quality has focused on western countries (Bradbury et. al 2000; Glenn 1990; Amato et. al 2003;
Bulanda and Brown 2007) and that too on US specifically. In the non-western settings when
marital quality has been studied like in Cameroon (Gwanfogbe et. al 1997), Turkey (Fisiloglu and
Demir 2000), China (Pimentel 2000), Bolivia (Orgil and Heaton 2005), India (Kumar and Trivedi
99 ; Singh et. al ; Sandhya 9 use western measures and conceptions of marital
quality.

2. Defining Marital Quality

There is no single accepted definition of marital quality. Researchers have used many dimensions
of the concept of marital quality (Amato et. al. 2003; Kaufmann and Taniguchi 2006; Spanier
1976; Umberson et. al 2005; Hassenbrauk and Fehr 2002; Skinner et. al 2002; Norton 1983).
However, there is a broad agreement in the literature that marital quality is a complex
multidimensional concept (Jaiswal 2014).

Some aspects of the marital quality are subjective and intrinsic in nature such as satisfaction
about marriage, love and affection between partners and understanding. Other aspects viz.
communication, joint engagement in activities, are objective and external lending themselves well
for quantitative measurement.

The factors affecting marital quality are well-studied in the literature. The predictors that lead to
a good marriage occur at the individual as well as the contextual level. While some of the
individual level factors such as, age at marriage, education, presence of children, are universal in
nature, others like type of marriage, contact before marriage are context-specific factors which
differ in different societies. Even the way in which universal factors affect marital quality is
shaped by the local cultural norms and practices.

1
Doctoral Student, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park. 2112 Parren Mitchell Art-
Sociology Building (Bldg 146), 3834 Campus Dr., College Park, MD 20742, USA. Email: ojoshi@umd.edu
2
Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, USA and Senior Fellow, National Council of
Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi, India.
3
Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, USA.
Marital communication is an important indicator of marital quality. It indicates how connected
the partners are with each other. It also acts as the channel for voicing issues, concerns, as well
as achievements, sharing joy and sorrows thereby revealing some intrinsic aspects of marital
quality. In addition, unlike some of the subjective indicators, communication is less likely to be
prone to the Social Desirability bias and can be captured nicely in a survey setting.

However, we do not know what determines spousal communication and whether it is

idiosyncratic or systematically related to the conditions surrounding marriage and is affected by
other factors that affect marital quality.

3. Measurement of Marital Quality

If defining what constitutes a good marriage is difficult, how to measure the quality of marriage
is even more so. Marital quality is a multi-dimensional concept varying across time and place.
Allendorf (2012) points out that universally applying the western measures of marital quality
based on research in western country setting can lead to misleading inferences. Some aspects of
marital qualities could be common to all countries while some others are country or culture-
specific. Moreover, the determinants of marital quality which are universal may still influence
marital quality in different manner in one country than in another as these universally applicable
factors are operationalized within a specific cultural setting. Without understanding this specific
cultural setting, use of the concept and measurement of marital quality and its determinants could
lead to problems. For example, the Standard Dyadic Adjustment Scale used to measure marital
quality for American couples has kissing frequency as one of the indicators of marital quality,
however, as Shek and Cheung (2008) bring to our notice, this would be an inappropriate indicator
of marital satisfaction in China.

Thus, being mindful of the cultural context is very crucial in developing indicators of marital
quality. As mentioned above, there are not many studies which keep this cultural context in mind
when examining the quality of marital quality and its determinants. With respect to South Asia,
Hoelter et. al (2004) examined the effect of nonfamily experiences and other factors, on marital
quality in Nepal. Using exploratory factor analysis, Allendorf (2012) studied, which factors had
an impact on marital quality in Nepal. She found out that spousal choice, marital duration,
education and gender are significantly associated with the marital quality. Allendorf (2012) using
semi-structured interviews in a village in India presented a comparative picture of the conception
of marital quality in India and in western countries. Jaiswal (2014) employed a social
psychological approach examining the marital satisfaction in arranged marriages in India and
found that the marital satisfaction is dependent on a variety of factors.

The studies mentioned above examined the determinants of marital quality in South Asia either
by examining qualitatively just one village or were based on a small sample which may not be
representative of the population of the country. This paper aims to contribute to the existing body
of literature, by examining the determinants of marital quality in the context of Indian society.
India is a fit case to look at the determinants of the marital quality. First, the societal context of
India is quite different from the western context, in which the issue of marital quality has been
studied. India is a diverse country with different socio-religious groups following different norms
and cultural practices with regard to marriage. It is interesting to see how the determinants of
quality operate in such a setting. Second, despite the aforementioned heterogeneity, most of the
marriages in India to date follow the same practice of what is termed as arranged marriages’
where the parents choose the prospective bride/groom for their son and daughter. 95% of the
marriages in India are caste-endogamous marriages (Desai 2015). India thus provides a curious
case then where the transformation of family systems is not yet complete.

4. Marital Practices in India: A Case of Continuity with Change

Sociologists and demographers usually talk about two main theories that link how the social
changes with family changes in general and marital practices in particular-First, the Second
Demographic Transition (SDT) theory and Second, the Developmental Idealism (DI) theory.

The (SDT) theory (Lesthaeghe 1983, 1995; Lesthaeghe and Surkyn 1988; Van de Kaa 1987)
postulates that changes in family systems occur in stages. The SDT talks about the values of
individualism , freedom , choice , equality of gender leading to normative shifts in how a society
perceives the institutions of marriage and family which then gives rise to greater disharmony
and instability in marital and familial relations.

The theory of Developmental )dealism Thornton , contends that the attitudinal and
behavioural changes in various phenomena related to family have been possible due to the
ideational influences. It says that the themes of freedom, consent and value of women were linked
to enlightenment and have tremendously influenced many dimensions of family change. The
developmental idealism ideas associate the progress and development with individualism,
independent living, freedom, equality, autonomous and mature marriage, controlled fertility and
on the contrary they associate ideas of traditionalism and underdevelopment with familism,
extended households and kinships, hierarchy, parental control, arranged marriages, low
valuation of women and natural fertility. Thornton argues that these ideational influences affect
the low and middle income countries as well and lead to family changes. Other literature by
Caldwell (1982), Caldwell et. al (1983), Lesthaeghe (1983) Lesthaeghe and Surkyn (1988), also
point out role played by ideational factors in influencing individual demographic behaviour
pertaining to marriage and fertility.

Both these theories predict certain changes at the societal level which then influence the family
changes which are closely linked to changes in marital practices and behaviour. Some changes as
predicted by proponents of these authors have happened across the globe. The fertility and
mortality trends are beginning to converge all over the world. Family sizes are becoming smaller
and age at marriage is rising (Byrant 2007; Ortega 2014; Raymo et al 2015).

Despite these changes, some of the characteristics of the non-western families are resistant to
change. In East Asian countries like Japan, China, South Korea inter-generational co-residence is
still high. Non-western families have not converged to the conjugal family ideal and western
countries themselves have experienced changes in nuclear family system in recent years (Cherlin
2012).

To speak of Indian context, historically, India has had a system of arranged marriages which is
rooted in the caste system and patrilineal and patrilocal family system (Karve 1965; Kolenda
1987). By and large the system of arranged marriages, where parents deciding partner for their
children is still predominant, although as Desai notes, of late daughter s inputs and
opinions are being taken into consideration while deciding the potential partner for her.
However, Allendorf and Pandian (2016) note that, the extent of marital change in India is not well
established and rather than adopting the western practices of choosing spouses, Indian society
seems to have embraced a hybrid of both traditional and modern ways of spousal choice.

Thus, today in India we broadly observe three types of marriages:

a) Marriages with self-choice colloquially referred to as love marriage

b) Marriages with no-choice (arranged marriages)

c) Marriages with combined inputs from parents and children

Another interesting feature of Indian marriages is that 95% of them are caste-endogamous
marriages (Desai 2015) and the rate of divorce is very low in India.4 Given this context, it is
interesting to see what shapes marital quality and specifically, if type of marriage has any impact
on it.

5. Research Question

Marriage in India is not viewed as a contract between individuals but rather a sacrament which
binds two persons in holy matrimony while also bonding two families together. Marital
relationship then, does not just remain a function of how husband and wife relate to each other
individually, but rather it also depends on the extent to which the family is welcoming or less
welcoming of the incoming bride (Chowdhry 2007). While the modernization theory and
developmental idealism theory suggests that modern values of conjugal love , freedom and
choice in spousal selection will matter more than the orthodox factors such as caste and income,
whether the type of marriage would affect the quality of marriage and if it does, to what extent
it affects marital quality is not yet clear.

Also, involvement of family members in choosing the life-partner may, on one hand, reduce some
stress associated with choosing one s own partner, while on the other hand such an involvement
may deprive the spousal choice and thereby de-emphasize the husband-wife relationship from
the beginning (Blood 1972; Fox 1975). Thus, whether these initial conditions that surround the
spousal choice and marriage, affect the later trajectory of marital quality remains an empirical
question.

I propose to examine the determinants of marital quality in the context of Indian society.
Specifically, I look at the relationship between spousal choice and marital quality as reflected in
the communication between the partners.

I hypothesize that controlling for the other factors that affect marital communications, marriages
with parental choice fare no worse than marriages with self-choice.

6. Data

The study shall use India Human Development Survey (IHDS)-II data collected in 2011-12 (Desai,
Vanneman, and NCAER 2015). IHDS is a nationally representative data set collected for over
42,000 households and over 2, 00,000 individuals all over India. It is a multi-topic data set
containing extensive information on the household income and consumption, health, education
and gender outcomes. Along with the household information, village information on various
facilities is also collected. I have used a dataset of about 39000 ever married women from IHDS
second round (2011-12).

Dependent Variable:

The dependent variable to be used in this study is Frequency and Areas of communication
between spouses . )ndicator of Marital communications represents a crucial aspect of marital

4
13 per 1000 marriages in 2015
quality by giving idea of how well-connected the partners are with each other. In addition, as
noted earlier, unlike some of the subjective indicators, communication is less likely to be prone
to Social Desirability bias and can be captured neatly in a household survey. IHDS-II asks three
questions about the frequency of communication with each question pertaining to one area of
communication between spouses. These questions are asked to the ever married woman. The
three questions asked are, Do you and your husband talk about-a) things that happen at work/on
farm? b) what to spend money on? c) things that happen in the community such as elections or
politics? Each respondent has to choose one response to these questions from three possible
responses- never , sometimes and often .

Independent Variable:

The main independent variable of interest is degree of self-selection in choosing the partner.
IHDS-II asked two questions to eligible women. The first question asked is Who chose your
husband? with the options for response as: (a) respondent herself (b) respondent and
parents/other relatives together (c) parents/other relatives alone (d) others. Those women who
answered that their parents/other relatives or others were asked a follow-up yes-no question,
Did you have any say in choosing him? . Using answers to these questions, I have divided the
respondents into three categories with respect to spousal choice. The first category comprises of
women who said that they themselves chose their spouse. This is the category of self-choice. In
the second category, I have included all women who either chose option (c) or (d) in the first
question and answered that they had no say in choosing their husband for the follow-up
question. This is the category of women which did not have any say in choosing their own spouse.
Lastly, the third category comprises of women who have either answered that they and their
parents/relatives chose the husband or those women who have answered yes in the follow-up
question.

Controls:

Besides the main variable of interest i.e. spousal choice, there are other controls that could affect
spousal communications such as level of education of the wife, presence of children, duration of
marriage, age at marriage, employment status, and contact before marriage and other
demographic characteristics like caste and religion are used.

7. Methodology:

The dependent variable communications frequency has inherent levels indicating how frequently
the husband-wife talk to each other. Therefore, I employ the Ordinal Logistic Regression
framework which takes the following functional form:

Pr(Yj=i)= Pr(ki-1 < β1X1j + β2X2j +………+ β2X2j + uj<=ki …

where, uj is assumed to be logistically distributed in ordered logit.

8. Descriptive Statistics:

Spousal Choice for Different Marriage Cohorts:

We note that there is a significant decline in only parents choosing the husband for their daughter
for successive cohorts. For couples who were married before 1970 about 90% of the marriages
were such, where only parents chose the husband for the daughter, but as we move towards more
recent cohorts only 67% of the marriages are such where parents alone have say in the marriage.
This decline in parents only is simultaneously accompanied by increase in spousal selection by
self-choice and joint determination from the daughter and parents both.

Fig. 1 Spousal Choice and Marriage Cohorts

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Before 1970 Before 1980 Before 1990 Before 2000 2000 & After

Self Joint Parents

Spousal Choice and Areas of Communication

We also plot in the graph below spousal choice with marital communications. We are only
reporting spousal choice with frequency of communication responded as often . However, as we
can see, we don t find any systematic relationship between marital quality as reflected in
frequency and area of communication and spousal choice mechanisms.

Fig. 2 Spousal Choice and Marital Communication

60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Often Often Often
Self Joint Parents

Communication Areas Work/Farm Communication Areas Expenditure

Communication Areas Politics

However, descriptive statistics is at best suggestive and one can t get the analytical association
between covariates and the dependent variables. Therefore, we run an ordinal logistic regression
model to see if there is any relationship between spousal choice and marital communications. We
run three different models for three different areas of communications namely-work,
expenditure and politics and communications.

We show the preliminary regression results next.

 Preliminary Regression Results

Discuss Work Discuss Expenditure Discuss Politics/Community Issues

Coefficients Standard P>Z Coefficients Standard P>Z Coefficients Standard P>Z
Error Error Error
N 31892 31879 31865
Spousal Choice (Self-
choice omitted)
Joint -0.051* 0.052 0.322 -0.068 0.055 0.22 -0.106 0.053 0.046
Only Parents 0.122** 0.049 0.014 -0.025 0.053 0.64 0.086* 0.051 0.09

Residence Location
(Metro omitted)
Other Urban Area -0.433*** 0.049 0.000 -0.047 0.050 0.351 -0.154*** 0.049 0.002
More Developed -0.043 0.049 0.373 -0.047 0.050 0.347 -0.215*** 0.049 0.000
Villages
Less Developed 0.090* 0.049 0.067 -0.041 0.051 0.422 -0.192*** 0.050 0.000
Villages

Caste and Religion

(Forward Castes
omitted)

OBC 0.154*** 0.031 0.000 0.127*** 0.033 0.000 -0.051 0.031 0.105
Dalit 0.068** 0.035 0.053 0.132*** 0.037 0.000 -0.037 0.035 0.297
Adivasi 0.162*** 0.047 0.001 0.115** 0.050 0.022 -0.067 0.048 0.168
Muslim -0.224*** 0.041 0.000 -0.042** 0.043 0.325 -0.147*** 0.041 0.000
Christian, Sikh, Jains 0.147* 0.084 0.079 0.091* 0.090 0.313 -0.093 0.086 0.277

Level of Education
(No education
omitted)
1-4 std. -0.003 0.043 0.936 0.089 0.045 0.05 0.126*** 0.044 0.004
5-9 std. 0.115*** 0.028 0.000 0.182*** 0.030 0.000 0.254*** 0.029 0.000
10th and High School 0.296*** 0.036 0.000 0.349*** 0.038 0.000 0.522*** 0.037 0.000
Some College 0.403*** 0.119 0.001 0.494*** 0.124 0.000 0.672*** 0.121 0.000
Graduate and above 0.419*** 0.055 0.000 0.579*** 0.058 0.000 0.847*** 0.054 0.000

Number of Children 0.063*** 0.009 0.000 0.090*** 0.009 0.000 0.015* 0.009 0.085
Age 0.011*** 0.001 0.000 0.010*** 0.001 0.000 0.012*** 0.001 0.000

Wage Work
Yes 0.026 0.024 0.286 0.146*** 0.025 0.000 0.104*** 0.024 0.000
Note: Source: Author’s Calculations; Significance Levels: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. State dummies are
controlled for but not reported.

The above table shows interesting results that even after controlling for caste, education level,
location and other controls, whether the marriage is arranged by their parent s choice alone as
compared to the self-choice marriage doesn t matter. )n fact, marriages arranged by parents, seem
to have a positive impact on the communication frequency between married partners (except for
discussing expenditure).

Moreover, the table also shows two interesting facts. Age and number of children coefficients are
positive and significant indicating the possibility that as couples age and as they have more
children, the communication between husband and wife also matures.

As far as effect of education is concerned, we note that education is generally positively associated
with frequency of communications irrespective of the area of communication. The coefficients
are particularly stronger for higher levels of education indicating the increased levels of
information/knowledge about world in general is conducive for more dialogue between spouses.

Future Research

Although the above research shows that, after controlling for other factors that affect marital
communication, there is no dependency created by the initial conditions surrounding marriage,
in terms of control over spousal choice.

However, the analysis above could be subject to following criticism:

a) Since marital quality is not just affected by the direct individual characteristics but also
indirectly affected by some of the household specific and contextual cultural factors, the
above model does not account for that. Given the fact that there is tremendous
heterogeneity across Indian states, in order to account for the contextual factors, I
propose to use a Multi-level Random Effects Model . )ndividuals form the first level of
analysis and districts/states are at level two.

b) It is possible that families which allow love marriages/self-choice by females are

different families from those who don t allow such choice and hence there is the issue of
selectivity. I propose to use both rounds of IHDS data and Within household Fixed Effects
model.
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