Applied Economics Seminar Series. "For Better or for Babies: Fertility Constraints and Marriage in China"
Published: 14 March 2025
07 May 2025. Professor Eva Raiber, Aix-Marseille School of Economics
Professor Eva Raiber, Aix-Marseille School of Economics
"For Better or for Babies: Fertility Constraints and Marriage in China"
Wednesday, 07 May 2025. 15:00-16:30
Room 141A, Adam Smith Business School Building
Abstract
Can fertility policies have unintended effects on who gets married? We investigate the effect of the 2015 relaxation of China's one-child policy on marriage outcomes. Before universal permission for two children, certain groups were already allowed to have two children. At the same time, China's sex ratio is highly skewed towards more marriageable men than women. Being allowed to have a second child could be a valuable characteristic in the marriage market, increasing men's chances of marriage. Previously advantaged men might then lose out from the relaxation of the one-child policy as they lose their marriage market advantage. Using detailed policy data on exemptions from the one-child limit and individual data from 2010–2018, we find that after the relaxation men who were previously allowed to have a second child are less likely to get married. There is no effect on women. The effect is concentrated within counties with high fertility rates and provinces with a high sex imbalance. The results suggest that differential fertility constraints distorted who got married by giving those allowed to have a second child an advantage. We also find that provinces where more people were exempted see an increase in positive assortative marriages after the relaxation, suggesting distortions also on who married whom.
Bio
Eva Raiber is a Professor of Economics at the Aix-Marseille School of Economics, Aix-Marseille University. She obtained her PhD in 2019 at the Toulouse School of Economics. In her research, she uses empirical, behavioural, and experimental methods to study questions in the fields of family economics, development economics and the economics of religion. She currently studies fertility, educational choices, marital preferences, and religious participation.
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First published: 14 March 2025