The More the Merrier? The Effect of Relaxing Birth Quotas on Marriage Outcomes

Using a relaxed one-child policy in China for couples who are both only-children themselves, this paper estimates the causal effect of the policy on people’s marital choices and fertility outcomes. Applying a Difference-in-­Differences approach, I find that only-children became more likely to marry only-children to have a second child after the introduction of the policy. In addition, the treatment effect is more significant for only-child men than for only-child women resulting from marriage market competition and fertility disagreement between men and women. Specifically, after introducing the policy, only-child men invested more in searching and signaling, and increased their marriage transfers to marry only-child women. The traditional family values affect the marriage choices of only-child women but not that of only-child men. These findings provide evidence on the gender gap in desired fertility and underscore the importance of mitigating motherhood penalty in East Asian societies