Gender imbalance, assortative matching, and household income inequality in China

Chen Huang and Serhiy Stepanchuk

Macroeconomic Dynamics, 2025, vol. 29, -

Abstract: This paper studies the effect of gender imbalance on assortative matching and household income inequality. Using data across prefectures in China, we show that a higher sex ratio in the marriage market is negatively associated with both assortative marriage and household income inequality. Motivated by empirical evidence, we develop a heterogeneous-agent model to study the mechanism behind the pattern. The quantitative results of the model match the empirical evidence: a higher sex ratio is associated with a lower degree of assortative matching, which leads to a decrease in household income inequality. When we allow men and women to choose their level of education endogenously before entering the marriage market, we find that a higher sex ratio leads to a higher level of education investment among both men and women, with men investing more significantly than women.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (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:cup:macdyn:v:29:y:2025:i::p:-_165

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Macroeconomic Dynamics from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().