Love Match, Marriage Distance, and Marriage Payment: Evidence from Rural China

The excessive marriage payment indicated by brideprice/dowry imposes a huge family financial burden, especially on rural households. Although some determinants have been examined, the relationship between matching types of couples and marriage payment is rarely known. The goal of this study is to analyze this relationship and the role of marriage distance in it. We adopt Logit, Tobit, and SUR models with the database across 70 years in rural China from a nearly national representative sample. The results show that love-match couples are 10.7% and 10.3% less likely to pay brideprice and dowry than that of parental matchmaking, respectively, and they pay less amount of brideprice and dowry. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between marriage distance and brideprice/dowry, and love match has the largest correlation with marriage payment behaviors for couples with long marriage distance.