Love and Money by Parental Match-Making: Evidence from Chinese Couples

How match-making methods a¤ect marriage outcomes is an understudied topic. Using a survey of Chinese couples in 1991, this paper examines whether parental involvement in match-making a¤ects a couple’s marriage harmony and joint income. We …nd that, compared with those married through self search, couples relying on parental help in match-making have on average less harmony and less income in rural areas. This …nding holds after we use the area-speci…c tradition of parental match-making as an instrumental variable (IV) for parental involvement. In comparison, urban areas show a similar negative e¤ect of parental match-making on marriage harmony, but the e¤ect on income is slightly positive in OLS and becomes more signi…cant with the IV. These results are consistent with our theoretical prediction about the agency cost of using parents as matchmakers in the marriage market. JEL: J12, D82, D83. Keywords: Marriage Outcome, Match-Making Method, Parental Involvement, China, Agency Cost. We wish to thank William Evans, Vijayendra Rao, Seth Sanders, Mary Shirley, Je¤rey Smith, Yi Lu, Yuyu Chen and the participants at U. of Maryland workshop and the 2003 PAA conference for constructive comment and suggestions. Huang gratefully acknowledges the …nancial support of SMU Research Grant 10-C244-SMU-002. The views expressed here do not implicate the World Bank and the countries that it represents.