Young women in cities: Urbanization and gender-biased migration

Yumi Koh, Jing Li, Yifan Wu, Junjian Yi and Hanzhe Zhang ()

Journal of Development Economics, 2025, vol. 172, issue C

Abstract: Young women outnumber young men in cities in many countries during periods of economic growth and urbanization. This gender imbalance among young urbanites is more pronounced in larger cities. We use the gradual rollout of Special Economic Zones across China as a quasi-experiment to establish the causal impact of urbanization on gender-differentiated incentives to migrate. We highlight the role of the marriage market in increasing rural women’s chance of marrying and marrying up in urban areas during rapid urbanization.

Keywords: Urbanization; Migration; Gender imbalance; Marriage market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387824001275
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:deveco:v:172:y:2025:i:c:s0304387824001275

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103378

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().