The influence of bride price on the marriage quality of Chinese women and its differences between urban and rural areas

Abstract

The practice of bride price payment has a longstanding history in China and has become a customary procedure by which men are able to get married. Despite attracting significant research attention due to the escalating bride price amount, few studies have focused on its impact on marriage quality. Using data from the 2020 Beijing and Chengdu Household Survey, this study examined how the bride price amount affects women's marital quality, including marital happiness, marital relationship quality, and exposure to domestic violence, based on three theoretical perspectives: marriage repayment theory, marriage endowment theory, and marriage signal theory. The study also incorporated interaction terms to investigate potential differences in the effects of bride price on women's marital quality between urban and rural areas. The results indicate that the current bride price practice is more aligned with the marriage endowment theory and has a statistically significant positive effect on urban women's marital happiness and relationship quality, but no effect was observed in rural areas. The influence of the bride price amount on the frequency of domestic violence against women also varied between urban and rural areas. Because men in rural areas face a disadvantage in the marriage market and there is a scarcity of available women, they are less likely to resort to domestic violence to manage marital conflicts when paying a higher bride price.