Hypergamy (colloquially referred to as "marrying up") is a term used in social science for the act or practice of a person marrying another of higher caste or social status than themselves.
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The antonym "hypogamy" refers to the inverse: marrying a person of lower social class or status.
Both terms were coined in India in the 19th century while translating classical Hindu law books, which used the Sanskrit terms anuloma and pratiloma for the two concepts.
Prevalence
Forms of hypergamy have been practiced throughout history, including in India, imperial China, ancient Greece, the Ottoman Empire, feudal Europe, and the United States.
Today most people marry their approximate social equals, and in much of the world hypergamy is in slow decline: for example, it is becoming less common for women to marry older men. However, even in relatively gender-equal societies it is generally accepted that young women will often partner with powerful older men.
In India
For citizens of rural India, hypergamy is an opportunity to modernize. Marriages in rural India are increasingly examples of hypergamy. Farmers and other rural workers want their daughters to have access to city life, for with metropolitan connections comes internet access, better job opportunities, and upper-class social circles. A connection in an urban area creates a broader social horizon for the bride's family, and young children in the family can be sent to live with the couple in the city for better schooling. Hypergamy comes with a cost though: the dowry, which often costs as much or more than an entire house. The high price that has to be borne by parents to arrange a suitable marriage for a daughter has led to increasing rates of abortion of female fetuses.
The concept of marrying up in India is prevalent due to caste-based class stratification. The women from the higher castes were not allowed to marry men from a lower caste. This concept, cited in the Vedas as the Anuloma was justified as the mechanism to keep the Hindu ideological equivalent of the gene pool from degrading. The opposite of the Anuloma, called the Pratiloma was not allowed in the ancient Indian society. However, the Vedas cite an example where one such exception was allowed when the daughter of Sage Shukracharya, Devayani was allowed to marry a Kshatriya king (lower caste compared to Brahmanas in the Indian caste system) named Yayati.
Feminist analysis
Feminist analysis of hypergamy says the practice needs to be understood in the context of a patriarchial system: men choose attractive partners because they can, and women choose partners with material resources simply because they make life more comfortable; there are of course exceptions to this as to any other rule—men will also choose women who make their lives more comfortable. Feminist historians say lower-status families participate in hypergamy because it's felt that the best possible use of a daughter is for her to increase the status of her natal family by marrying up. Hypergamy allows higher-status men maximum choice in mate selection, and, as historically practiced in India, results in the man's family gaining wealth through the transfer of dowry from the bride's family. Overall, hypergamy has the potential to advantage lower-status women economically and socially the most, since they marry into a higher status and the dowry becomes part of their marital wealth. This occurs at the cost of less-desirable, higher-status women (by removing high-status men from their mating pool, from which social constraints and economic disincentives already exclude lower-status men). Lower-status men are disadvantaged the most (by removing lower-status women from their mating pool, from which social constraints and economic incentive structures already exclude higher-status women). The overall effect is that all women have a chance to marry into a high(er)-status, whereas lower-status men do not.