European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics

Title : ForBetter or for Babies: Fertility Constraints and Marriage in China

Co-author: Lucie Giorgi

Abstract : Canfertility constraints shape who gets married? We examine how the 2015relaxation of China’s one-child policy affected marriage outcomes. Before thereform, some groups were already exempt from the one-child limit and permittedto have two children. In a context where China’s sex ratio is heavily skewedtoward surplus men, being allowed to have a second child may have been adesirable characteristic in the marriage market, increasing men's chances ofmarriage. The policy relaxation removed this relative advantage, potentiallydecreasing the marriage prospects of previously exempt men. Using detailedpolicy data on exemptions and individual-level data from 2010 to 2018, we findthat, following the 2015 relaxation, men who had previously been allowed asecond child are less likely to marry compared to those previously not allowed.There is no effect for women. The results suggest that differential fertilityconstraints distorted who got married by advantaging certain men when there wasa demand for a second child and strong marriage competition among men. Wealso provide suggestive evidence that the relaxation increased matching byeducation in provinces where exemptions were moderately widespread, indicatingthat fertility constraints shaped not only who got married but also who marriedwhom.