This study aims to discover how the cultural backgrounds of the marriage market affect school dropout outcome among girls in secondary school level in Bangladesh. This study focuses on the practice of dowry payments that a bride’s family pays to the groom’s family. Previous research has indicated that the dowry practice in the marriage market hinders girls’ education in Bangladesh. This study examines how parents’ hypergamic tendency (i.e., ensuring that the groom’s educational level is higher than or equal to the bride’s education level) and dowry payment expectation influence school dropout outcomes for girls and relate to the parents’ class background factors. Data were collected in September, 2010 using questionnaires from parents of female students in the sub-district Pirgonj in Bangladesh. “structural equation modeling” was conducted to test direct and indirect associations among variables. The results show that parents’ hypergamic tendency and dowry payment expectation are both negatively associated with their daughters’ school dropout outcomes. Compared with employed parents, unemployed parents are less hypergamic and less likely to expect a higher dowry payment than the employed parents. The main reason for this difference is that unemployed parents prefer their daughters to leave school earlier to marry grooms who have a lower level of education, as higher-educated grooms demand a higher dowry price in the marriage market in Bangladesh.
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