Love Match, Marriage Distance, and Marriage Payment: Evidence from Rural China

Qijia Lyu and Linxiu Zhang
Additional contact information
Qijia Lyu: Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Linxiu Zhang: Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 23, 1-19

Abstract: The excessive marriage payment indicated by brideprice/dowry imposes a huge family financial burden, especially on rural households. Although some determinants have been examined, the relationship between matching types of couples and marriage payment is rarely known. The goal of this study is to analyze this relationship and the role of marriage distance in it. We adopt Logit, Tobit, and SUR models with the database across 70 years in rural China from a nearly national representative sample. The results show that love-match couples are 10.7% and 10.3% less likely to pay brideprice and dowry than that of parental matchmaking, respectively, and they pay less amount of brideprice and dowry. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between marriage distance and brideprice/dowry, and love match has the largest correlation with marriage payment behaviors for couples with long marriage distance.

Keywords: love match; brideprice; dowry; marriage distance; rural China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/23/13058/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/23/13058/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:23:p:13058-:d:687824

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().