The Chinese “Marriage Market”
Link: http://www.newsweek.com/2015/06/05/gender-imbalance-china-one-child-law-backfired-men-336435.html
Concepts: outside options, constricted sets
Since the one-child policy was enacted in China, the boy-to-girl birth ratio has hovered around 1.16, resulting in a projected 30 million men unable to find a female spouse. This has resulted in a constricted set between marriage-age women and men, as men seeking wives far outnumber women seeking husbands.
There’s no perfect matching between men and women, especially in urban areas, where women encounter far more opportunities to meet many different men from all kinds of social strata. This leverage is reflected in a few statistics, some sinister- an increase in North Korean women being brought in for arranged marriages, for example. In addition, savings rates have increased for single males in urban areas, a curious statistic during a time in which spending has dramatically risen. This increase reflects the need for men to achieve economic stability and buy an apartment- assets they’ll need to increase their chances of marriage. Furthermore, women aren’t staying put- state numbers estimate that divorce rates in Beijing and Shanghai are up to 30%, an astronomically high number for a typically conservative culture, with the country’s overall divorce rate rising 1.75 percentage points.
Interestingly, these trends show that the average 21st century Chinese family with a single female child, on average, possess an unexpectedly high level of social leverage- a benefit that could potentially challenge parents’ sex preferences at birth, and the deeper cultural attitudes behind these preferences.