Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan

This paper provides an economic analysis of the practice of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan based on a Beckerian model of family fertility and consumption. Bride kidnapping is considered to be a way of marrying a wife at lower cost. In our settings, bride kidnapping is rational behavior for an elder generation that values offspring more than does the younger generation. In existence of bride kidnapping, there are imbalanced excess demand and supply of brides of different qualities in the marriage market which then distorted the bride price. We provide an equilibrium analysis of the marriage market where bride kidnapping is allowed and find that bride kidnapping as an informal marriage institution in Kyrgyzstan is in transition from functioning as a way of lowering wedding cost to a symbolic practice. We show that the young women from the bottom of the society is the major victim of the bride kidnapping practice. We also discuss different types of marriage in contrast to bride kidnapping in this paper. 1 Lin Zhao is a second-year MAE student (Class of 2018) at Department of Economics, Duke University. Email: [email protected].