The pakistan national health survey revealed that most women in Pakistan are married to their first cousins; only two in five women wedded unrelated spouses.A relatively larger number of women married cousins on their father’s side than those on their mother’s side.

This tendency is likely the result of family’s preferences to keep the agricultural land and other assets within the family even after the young women were married to their first cousins on the father’s side. The same does not hold for marrying cousins on the mother’s side.

We find that odds of a woman to experience domestic violence are lower for those who married first cousins. The same was not true for those married to second cousins.