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Do public pensions matter to marriage? Evidence from China
By Hua Chen, Zining Liu, Xiaoxu Yang
This article examines the role of public pensions on the marriage market based on China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Firstly, we investigate if the extensive margin of public pensions, i.e., whether to participate in public pensions or not, has a significant effect through Difference-in-Difference (DID). The results indicate that public pensions have a significant effect on marriage for both urban and rural residents, and the gender and income heterogeneity of the effect exists since public pensions have a significant effect on the male and high-income residents. Secondly, we focus on the mediation mechanisms and investigate how public pensions effect marriage through different channels. The results show that public pensions produce a positive effect on marriage through improving people’s life satisfaction while public pensions produce a negative affect on marriage through reducing the number of children in the family. Finally, we investigate if the intensive margin of public pensions, i.e., increasing the benefits of public pensions, has a significant effect on marriage. We use the instrument variable (IV) model to reduce measurement bias stemming from endogeneity problems and find that increasing public pension benefits do not have a significant impact on marriage.
Source: SSRN
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