section_path: Economic issues/Dowry, bride price and dower
section_name: Dowry, bride price and dower
paragraph_text: Dowry, bride price and dower
  
  Dowry is property (money, goods, or estate) that a wife or wife's family gives to her husband when the wife and husband marry. Offering dowry was common in many cultures historically (including in Europe and North America), but this practice today is mostly restricted to some areas primarily in the Indian subcontinent.
  
  Bride price, (also bride wealth or bride token), is property paid by the groom or his family to the parents of a woman upon the marriage of their daughter to the groom. It is practiced mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of South-East Asia (Thailand, Cambodia), and parts of Central Asia.
  
  Dower is property given to the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage, and which remains under her ownership and control.