Social status and marriage markets: Evaluating a Hukou policy in China

Social status is a key determinant of marital sorting patterns. This paper studies the role of the hukou system — a household registration system in mainland China that categorizes individuals into rural and urban groups — in shaping marital sorting patterns. Specifically, I evaluate a policy that granted men the same rights to transfer their hukou status to children as women. The policy significantly increased hukou intermarriages, particularly between rural women and urban men. By estimating a two-sided directed search and matching model, I find that the policy distorted the marriage market by increasing search frictions to a greater extent for rural men than for urban men. Highly educated rural men would have benefited the most if this policy had not been implemented, indicating that they suffered the most welfare loss, at least in terms of marriage outcomes. The findings underscore the importance of understanding the role of social status in shaping marriage markets and the impact of status-related policy interventions on welfare outcomes.