Skewed Sex Ratios, Marriage Market Pressure and Parental Smoking Behavior in Rural China

China and India, as well as several other Asian states, have experienced increasingly skewed sex ratios, which may have triggered intensified competition in the marriage market. The existing literature captures the competition pressures by aggregate sex ratios, while marriage market competition tends to be highly localized. This paper utilizes two household longitudinal datasets from rural China – a primary census-type survey from Guizhou province and a secondary national survey from nine provinces – and a 1‰ sample of the 2000 China Population Census to examine parental smoking responses to skewed local sex ratios. Strikingly, parents with son in the marriage market engage in more smoking. In contrast, parents with daughter do not demonstrate this pattern. Income effect (motivated by earning more wealth to prepare for son’s marriage) is not a viable explanation for the observed consumption pattern. Coping with marriage market stress and depression is the most plausible pathway linking the observed unbalanced sex ratios and smoking behavior. Wealth signaling in the competitive marriage market may play a role as well. Moreover, this paper employs unique social network datasets with detailed information on household lineal relationships and long term spontaneous gift exchanges to spatially identify and distinguish indirect marriage market pressure within the networks from the direct effect in non-spatial models. Non-spatial models underestimate direct marriage market pressure by up to 5 percent and ignore indirect pressure spillover to the networks. Given the unbalanced sex ratio and highly competitive marriage market in China in the coming decade, disentangling the sources of marriage market impact with negative network externalities will help design efficient targeting policies that improve parental well-being.

Keywords: Skewed Sex Ratios, Marriage Market, Smoking, Spatial Econometrics

JEL: J13, J22