干得好不如嫁得好?——房价变动与居民婚姻观念研究

房价的快速上涨是近年来我国经济中的重要现象,对宏观经济增长乃至微观个人的观念与行为都产生了重大的影响,但尚未有研究系统考察房价变化对居民婚姻观念的影响。房价上涨反映了对未来预期的不确定性,这种不确定性势必会影响到人们对工作与婚姻的权衡。本文基于中国综合社会调查(CGSS)2010和2015年数据,详细考察了房价变动对人们在工作与婚姻之间权衡的影响,用人们对“干得好不如嫁得好”的看法来衡量工作与婚姻的权衡。研究结果表明,房价涨幅越高,居民对“干得好不如嫁得好”的认同感越高,且这种现象主要体现在女性群体中。异质性分析表明,女性、未婚女性、已婚女性、女性流动人口、城镇户籍女性以及拥有女儿数量越多的人在工作与婚姻的权衡中更倾向于通过婚姻来抵御未来预期不确定性产生的风险。房价上涨主要通过财富效应和预算约束效应对人们在工作与婚姻之间的权衡产生影响。

Is a Good Marriage Better than a Good Job？ A Study on the Change in Housing Price and the Marriage Notion

The rapid increase in housing prices is a popular phenomenon demonstrated by China's economy in recent years. Housing is one of the most important assets for a family, so a rapid housing price increase implies rapid change in family wealth, which has great impacts on individuals' decisions and attitudes. In traditional Chinese culture, the notion that a good marriage is better than a good job plays an important role in one's decision to marry. Some surveys show that this perspective remains popular in Chinese society. Much of the literature analyzes the effects of social circumstances and physical foundations on this notion from the view of female psychology and sociology, but few studies discuss the effects of economic factors.
For rational individuals, the trade-off decision between marriage and employment must involve the consideration of economic factors, such as the change in housing prices. Theoretically, the housing price level reflects a city's cost of living and income levels. The change in housing prices reflects expected uncertainty in the future, with higher changes in housing prices indicating greater expected uncertainty in the future. The rapid increase in housing prices implies not only the increase in nominal family wealth, but also the expected increase in housing expenditure. Therefore, the change in housing prices can affect the trade-off between marriage and employment through two channels. The first channel is the wealth effect. This channel implies that with the rapid increase in housing prices, the nominal wealth of individuals with housing increases. As the motivation to avoid the risk of future uncertainty by marriage decreases, the change in housing prices causes individuals to prefer employment to marriage. The second channel is the budgetary constraint effect. Specifically, the increase in housing prices implies a large future expenditure, which exerts great pressure on individuals with lower income and more liability. In this case, the change in housing prices causes individuals to prefer marriage to employment to avoid the risk of future uncertainty.
Based on China's General Social Survey (CGSS) data of 2010 and 2015, we examine whether people prefer a good marriage to a good job due to the increase in housing prices. We use the notion of a good job or a good marriage as the trade-off between employment and marriage. The baseline regression of the probit model shows that the higher the increase in housing prices is, the more likely people are to prefer a good marriage. This finding remains robust when we change the dependent variable and the explanatory variable of housing level (we replace the housing price-income ratio with the urban real value of housing price level). Heterogeneous analyses show that females, unmarried females, married females, female migrants, urban females, and people with more daughters prefer marriage to employment when facing increased housing prices. This preference allows them to avoid the risk of future uncertainty. Finally, we test the mechanisms of the wealth effect and the budgetary constraint effect. We test the wealth effect by dividing the sample into three groups according to the number of housing properties owned and who has the property. We find that the rapid increase in housing prices increases the nominal wealth of females with more housing such that their sense of identification with the notion that a good marriage is better than a good job is lower. We test the budgetary constraint effect by designing the regression according to individual income level. The probit regression shows that the increase in housing prices leads females with lower incomes to increase their acceptance of the notion that a good marriage is better than a good job, as they would suffer stronger budgetary constraints in the face of rapidly increasing housing prices.
Although the notion that a good marriage is better than a good job is culturally rooted, economic factors such as housing prices can also affect it. Our main contribution is our analysis of the relationship between housing price and the notion of marriage and our discussion of the probable mechanisms of the wealth effect and the budgetary constraint effect. With the rapid rate of housing price increase in recent years, more and more young females are prioritizing a good marriage. This is expected to exert greater pressure on the labor market and lead to a lower rate of female labor participation. As the increase in housing price does not significantly increase the marriage preference of males, but increases males' preference for employment at the cost of delaying marriage, it may further decrease fertility in the future. Thus, this problem is worthy of further research.