Left over or opting out? Squeeze, mismatch and surplus in Chinese marriage markets

Pauline Rossi () and Yun Xiao ()
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Pauline Rossi: CREST, Ecole Polytechnique, France
Yun Xiao: University of Gothenburg, Sweden

No 2025-14, Working Papers from Center for Research in Economics and Statistics

Abstract: Marriage is declining in China. Among singles, the probability of marrying in 2019 was half that of marrying in 1999. We estimate a Choo and Siow model using census data to quantify the relative roles of changes in population structure and changes in marital surplus, i.e., the value of marriage. We find that the increase in the supply of educated people explains half of the decline, partly due to a mismatch between highly-educated women and less-educated men. The deterioration of female-to-male ratio, known as marriage squeeze, explains an additional 13% for men. The decrease in surplus accounts for the remainder.

Keywords: Marriage markets; Sex ratio; Education; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2025-05-26
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