Mate Selection in India through a Historical Lens: Evidence from Times of India’s Matrimonial Columns

Nitin Kumar Bharti, New York University Abu Dhabi
Aliakbar Akbaritabar, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Koyel Sarkar, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Luca Maria Pesando, New York University Abu Dhabi
Aasli Nur, University of Oxford

This project adopts a novel historical and computational perspective to investigate evolving patterns of mate selection and family formation in India using newspaper data from the Times of India’s matrimonial columns. These data, spanning over three centuries from 1860 to 2011, provide a valuable source to explore long-term trends in the changing salience of attributes such as potential partner’s ethnicity, gender, education, occupational status, etc., as well as gender differences in partner-seeking behavior. We do so by web scraping over 1.2 million classified ads from an archive of newspaper data. We apply text analysis techniques including, but not limited to, topic modeling to the 160,112 matrimonial columns identified within those advertisements. Our preliminary findings uncover important changes in gendered patterns of mate selection, with attributes such as physical appearance and skin complexion becoming more salient over time, particularly for women. All in all, the study contributes fresh insights to the discourse surrounding Indian marriages, shedding light on the evolving significance of core attributes influencing marriageability for both men and women.

Keywords: Historical Demography, Families, Unions and Households, Data and Methods

See extended abstract.