Marriage markets with too few brides
Marriage, the marriage market, sex ratios at birth and bride prices appear on 59 recent papers, almost all in the economics journals. In China and India, decades of skewed sex ratios have left millions of men unable to marry. What does that do to saving, crime, migration and the price of a wedding?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 59 papers carry a sex-ratio, marriage-market, gender-imbalance, bride-price or marriage keyword (52 in economics journals): "marriage" on 12, "sex ratio at birth" on 9, "marriage market" on 8, "marriage timing" on 6, "delayed marriage" on 4, "bride price" on 4. The cohorts born under the most skewed ratios are now of marriage age.
Questions
- In counties with the most skewed sex ratios, how much more do families with sons save, and does the saving show up in housing prices and bride prices?
- Do unmarried men migrate more, commit more crime, or take riskier jobs?
- As the ratio at birth normalizes, do bride prices and saving rates fall with it?
Data that could help
Census and population registers with sex ratios by cohort and county, household panels with marriage and saving data (China Family Panel Studies, China Household Finance Survey), and local crime statistics.
Next step
Relate county-level sex ratios of the 1990–2000 birth cohorts to current household saving rates and marriage payments in Chinese household survey data.