Daughters, Savings and Household Finances

Max Tani, Xin Wen and Zhiming Cheng
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Xin Wen: University of New South Wales

No 16440, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We explore the link between child gender and household financial decisions within a cultural environment that strongly favours having a son. Using data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), we find that the presence of a daughter is associated with a lower saving rate. This is consistent with the hypothesis that such families, facing a less competitive marriage market thanks to the relative under-supply of unmarried women, have lower incentives to raise their female heirs' marital prospects by accumulating bigger asset pools. The negative correlation becomes more pronounced as the daughter approaches marriageable age. This study expands existing research by examining the impact of child gender on financial decisions while controlling for unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity thanks to the panel nature of the CHFS.

Keywords: daughter; household savings; marriage market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 D14 J12 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-gen and nep-ger
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Working Paper: Daughters, Savings and Household Finances (2024)
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