Faculty of Business Administration
SEMINAR SERIES No. 23/1415
Business Economics

How Status Inheritance Rules Affect Marital Sorting:
Theory and Evidence from Urban China
Status Inheritance and Marital Sorting
Dr. Han Li
Assistant Professor, Division of Social Science
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Abstract

Using a matching model, we show that marital sorting by status tends to decline as parental statuses become less complementary in determining their children’s status. Our test explores a policy change in China in which men are granted the same rights as women in passing residency permits (hukou) to their children regardless of their spouse’s hukou – a change resulting in a less complementary status inheritance technology. We find that this change disrupted the previously rigid sorting by hukou and that the position of local men in the urban marriage market improved, whereas that of local women deteriorated.

Date: April 10, 2015 (Friday) 

Time: 14:30~16:00 

Venue: Faculty of Business Administration, E22-G013 

A Short Biography of Dr. Han
Dr. Han Li serves as Assistant Professor, Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Before joining HKUST, Dr. Han was Shorenstein fellow, Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. She got her B.A. in Economics at Xi’an Jiaotong University, M.A. in Economics at Peking University and Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard University.

ALL ARE WELCOME!