More to give in marriage? County-level sex ratios and marriage payments in China

Marriage payment is one of the most pervasive marital conventions in human history. However, how the local marriage market structure influences this marital practice is less known. Moreover, previous research studies different types of marriage payment (i.e., bride price, dowry, and parental economic support) separately. This study juxtaposes these types of marriage payments and examines the associations between county-level sex ratios and each of them in China. By linking survey data to census data, this study unravels that the associations between marriage payments and local sex ratios are gender-specific and cohort-dependent. In the 1995–2004 marriage cohort, the bride price (as well as parental support in the bride price) increases with the local sex ratio, aligned with the demographic-opportunity perspective. However, the dowry does not change as predicted by the demographic-opportunity perspective. Rather, it changes in parallel with the bride price. In the 2005–2014 marriage cohort, neither the bride price nor the dowry is associated with the local sex ratio. The findings reveal both the economic and the symbolic functions of marriage payments, whose relative importance varies across gender and time.