Love, money, and parental goods: Does parental matchmaking matter?

Abstract

, and participants at the Chicago-Renmin symposium on family and labor economics at the University of Chicago, the symposium of the 80th birthday of Steven Cheung at Shenzhen, U. of Maryland workshop, the AEA meetings, the PAA conference, and the Asian Conference on Applied Micro-Economics/Econometrics at Tokyo for constructive comment and suggestions. We are especially grateful to the late Gary Becker for his detailed comments at the Chicago-Remin symposium in which we presented an earlier version of a related paper. He encouragedųs to consider the issues from the perspective of parents and old age support. This paper would not exist without his encouragement and comments. We also thank the excellent research assistance from Lixin Tang. Huang gratefully acknowledges the financial support of SMU Research Grant 10-C244-SMU-002. The views expressed here do not implicate the World Bank or the countries that it represents. Part of the paper was revised when Jin visits the Federal Trade Commission. Any view expressed here does not represent the view of the Commission, any of its commissioners, or the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Parent–offspring conflict over mate choice: An experimental study in China

“…Arranged marriages were the dominant tradition in China for centuries: parents chose the spouse for their child, often with the help of a professional matchmaker (Huang, Jin, & Xu, ; Xia & Zhou, ; Xie & Combs, ). Since the beginning of the 20th century, a combination of increasing wage labour in China's cities and growing Western influence on China's culture and educational system began to promote young people's choices in mating decisions (Pimentel, ; Xiaohe & Whyte, ; Xie & Combs, ).…”

What Do Parents Want? Parental Spousal Preferences in China

“…In the Chinese context, Huang, Jin, and Xu [2012] find that couples that were introduced to each other by their parents or another relative have a higher cumulative income, but lower marital harmony. Huang, Jin, and Xu [2016] add that couples that rely on their parents for finding a spouse have more children.…”

“…For centuries, arranged marriage had been dominant. Parents chose the spouse for their child, often with the help of a professional matchmaker (Huang, Jin, and Xu 2016;Xia and Zhou 2003). After the Chinese Communist Party came to power the government passed the Marriage Law, adopted in 1950, making arranged marriage illegal.…”

Way of love and after‐marriage well‐being: Evidence from China

“…Huang et al (2012) used Chinese data to conduct empirical research, and the results showed that free love was happier. Furthermore, Huang et al (2017) established a theoretical model of marriage matching, which divided the matching methods into free love and parental participation. They found that couples whose parents participated in marriage matching took care of their parents more after marriage, but this filial piety was at the expense of the happiness of the couple, which was consistent with Becker et al (2016).…”