Typological Features and Determinants of Men’s Marriage Expenses in Rural China: Evidence from a Village-Level Survey

Abstract

Poverty due to the high marriage expenses in rural China has drawn considerable attention. In this paper, based on the data of the “Hundreds of Villages Survey in China” conducted in 2018, we analyze the characteristics, trends, and typological features of rural men’s marriage expenses, and identify the determinants of rural men’s marriage expenses types under the guidance of marriage exchange theory. With the help of latent profile analysis, multinomial logit analysis, and OLS analysis, this study firstly identifies four types of marriage expenses for Chinese rural men including the “bride price & marital house”, the “mixed”, the “bride price biased”, and the “marital house biased”, and secondly finds significant associations of educational level matching, occupational level matching, and type of urbanization with different types of rural men’s marriage expenses. If a rural man has a higher education than his wife, his marriage costs are less likely to be “bride price biased”, and when his occupational level is higher, his marriage cost is more likely to be “marital house biased”, which means greater financial pressure on him. Our research verifies the theory of marriage exchange into the quantitative analysis of marriage expenses for the first time, which effectively explains the reasons for the rising cost of marriage and provides an empirical basis for effectively managing this social problem.

1. Introduction

Payments between families at the time of marriage have existed throughout the history of most developed countries and are currently pervasive in many areas of the developing world [1]. In contemporary rural China, the poverty caused by such high marriage payments has drawn considerable attention from the public and academia. Rural men’s economic condition has become an important criterion for women to choose a spouse, which leads to a series of social consequences. On the one hand, the high bride price has increased the economic pressure on rural families. Some families become poor, return to poverty, or have high debts due to unaffordable marriage expenses. When a rural man cannot afford the bride price, he may be forced to withdraw from the marriage market and be unmarried for life; this may be accompanied by huge mental pressure and social exclusion. On the other hand, the high marriage expenses also have an impact on the time of marriage and childbirth, making people delay marriage, which further affects family and population reproduction. In addition, the rising expenses of marriage materialize the “marriage” and distort the marriage values. A study found that bride price had been associated with an increase in intimate partner violence. Men who see their power over women challenged resort to the discourse of the bride price, arguing that payment of the bride price gives them absolute authority over their wives [2]. Considering the competition of the marriage market, many rural families tend to find a daughter-in-law earlier, and the increased prevalence of early marriages and childbearing leads to instable marriages.

Research on China’s rural areas is inseparable from discussion of China’s special urban-rural relationship. China’s urbanization is unique in world development history, not only because of its rapidity and the sheer scale of rural-urban migration but also due to its urban and rural dual household registration system [3]. China’s urbanization has highly promoted its affluence while also inducing various challenges for the countryside [4]. The village is still the basic socio-economic unit in rural China and could be seen as the cell of the rural system [5]. From 1978 to 2019, China’s urban population increased from 17.92% to 60.6%, and is expected to reach about 65.5% [6]. The large-scale population flow from rural to urban areas has accelerated economic development and has brought more modern factors and the principle of interest exchange in the market economy into rural areas, making rural areas more open, and inspiring farmers to pursue the maximization of monetary benefits. The role of economic factors in the conclusion of marriages has been valued and manifested.

Due to the influence of the farming civilization, China is still a country with a very high marriage rate. In addition, China’s strict fertility policy since 1986, the preference for sons, sex-selective abortion, and migration from rural to urban areas generated a sex imbalance in the rural marriage market, that is, a serious male marriage squeeze [7]. Since 2010, there has been a large number of Chinese young men who cannot find spouses, and China has been confronted with a serious male marriage squeeze for decades [8]. In the competition of the marriage market, Becker, Landes, and Michael pointed out that that low-quality men can compete for wives with high-quality men at high prices, and this competition is closely related to the interest orientation of the market economy [9]. Under the influence of the modern economy, the marriage standards of rural people have gradually improved. A house in urban areas, a car, jewelry, and wedding photos have become the necessary conditions for most women to get married, increasing the economic pressure on rural families.

Studies in Northeast China have found that the bride price has gone through a process of changing from “gift money”, “money for the bride to buy jewelry”, and “money for parents to buy cigarettes” etc. to “a lot of cash” only [10]. Before 2000, the villagers of Dagu Village in the Anhui province paid more attention to the procedures and ceremonies of marriage. There were clear standards for things and prices that need to be prepared during the marriage process. In recent years, villagers have favored a bride price in the form of cash instead of those cumbersome forms [11]. The poorer and more remote the rural areas are, the higher the marriage expenses women require for local men [12]; this phenomenon exists in many rural areas in central and western China.

Compared with the qualitative research and theoretical studies on marriage expenses, empirical studies are relatively scarce mainly due to data unavailability and inadequacy. By using data from a rural population survey across 100 villages in China in 2018, this study analyzes the characteristics and determinants of marriage expenses for men in rural China and identifies the types of expenses via quantitative methods. To our knowledge, our study is the first quantitative study of typological features of marriage expenses in rural China.

2. Theoretical Analysis and Literature Review

2.1. Theoretical Analysis

Marriage payments have evolved within societies over time. In some periods, payments have risen sharply; in some cases, payments have shifted from the grooms’ side to the brides’, and vice versa; sometimes, property rights over such payments shift between marrying partners and parental generations [1]. For the study of marriage expenses, the following theories have been formed from different perspectives: Firstly, the theory of marriage payment refers to the bride price as a kind of marriage expense to confirm the transfer of bride to the groom’s family under the patriarchal and patrilineal systems [13]. Secondly, from the perspective of intergenerational or parental obligations, it contains the theory of marriage endowment and the theory of marriage reciprocity. Thirdly, from the perspective of rational choice in economics and the gender structure of the marriage market [14], the theory of marriage market price holds that the marriage expense is a direct reflection of the supply and demand of “marriageable resources” in the marriage market. Fourthly, from the perspective of resource exchange between newlyweds, the marriage exchange theory generally applies [15,16,17].

The marriage payment theory holds that women are subordinate to men, and they are in a subordinate position; every girl’s status is actually “the daughter-in-law of another family in the future”. This theory regards women as commodities [18] and emphasizes the dominant position of the parents of the groom and the bride; the newlyweds’ opinions are not important. Women’s rights campaigners say this practice should be abolished because it compromises the reproductive health of women by treating them as commodities [19]. With the development of society (the decline of patriarchy and the development of gender equality), the theory of marriage endowment gradually replaced the marriage payment theory. The marriage endowment theory refers to the wealth and gifts associated with the marriage process as channeled to the newlywed couple to help them establish a new family [20]. Schlegel and Eloul’s findings support this conclusion [21]. This theory emphasizes the role of intergenerational support that elders strengthen intergenerational relationships through financial support to newlyweds [14]. In this theory, the opinions of the newlyweds start to matter. Further, due to the one-child policy (OCP) that was practiced in China from 1982 to 2016, the number of one-child families increased, and the marriage reciprocity theory emerged. It emphasizes the interconnection between families in the conclusion of a marriage, and believes that the groom’s parents, the bride’s parents, and the newlywed are a community [22]. It no longer regards marriage as merely a labor supplement to the groom’s family but as a long-term social relationship between the three families.

The marriage market price theory holds that the marriage market is governed by competition for scarce resources [23]. There have been studies supporting this theory that argue that India’s high dowry is due to there being too many women and China’s high bride price due to there being too many men [7,20,24]. This theory has strong explanatory power for the macro marriage market but cannot explain micro individual marital behaviors, and it explains the formation of the phenomenon of high bride price but does not explain the direction of the marriage expenses.

The above theories are too weak to explain the current phenomenon of high marriage costs in China’s rural areas, because, in recent years, China’s urbanization development has caused great changes in the lives of rural people. By 2025, China’s eastern, central, western, and northeastern urbanization rates are expected to reach approximately 73.0%, 63.1%, 61.2%, and 66.7%, respectively [6]. On the one hand, the individual autonomy of newlyweds has increased. In traditional China, the establishment of in-law relationships was presided over and organized by prestigious people in the family or clan, and individuals could only accept it passively. At present, the development of the social economy and education has improved rural individuals’ resources and highlighted individual self-awareness. In the context of urbanization, the vast majority of rural youth leave their hometowns to go out to work as soon as they reach adulthood, which means they gain economic independence and they have chance to choose their marriage partners. On the other hand, the standard of mate selection has been improved, and assortative mating types have been diversified. A large number of young rural people have increased their knowledge and expanded their social network in the process of going outside their area of birth. With the help of technological progress and the popularization of online social networks, rural people have gradually formed a modern concept of marriage, love, and mate selection that is different from their parents. Urban life also increases the cost of marriage and love. Under the influence of the “competitive consciousness” of the market economy, young people gradually realize the connection between self-improvement and the competitive advantage of the marriage market and the importance of mastering a large amount of information on the marriage market.

Therefore, it becomes more meaningful and convincing to see the mate selection of contemporary Chinese rural youth from a micro perspective, as the explanatory power of the theory of marriage exchange increases. Why do rural men face high marriage expenses? What are the characteristics of their marriage expenses? Is there a correlation between the relative resource status of different rural couples and the cost of marriage? This study attempts to answer these questions. Due to the unequal possession of resources, there are always differences between husband and wife in some socioeconomic dimensions. Among them, the assortative mating of husband and wife’s resources is the factor that can best represent the negotiation between the two parties. Resource matching between husband and wife in marriage is the independent variable on which this study focuses.

2.2. Literature Review

2.2.1. Marriage Expenses

In ancient times, the custom of bride price and dowry existed in Judea, Sumer, Babylon, and the Arabian Peninsula and later appeared in England, and the American colonies in the 17th to 18th centuries. In contemporary society, this custom seems to be limited to Muslim societies (especially Middle East Arab region) and some parts of China [25]. China is one of the few examples where dowry and bride price coexist, but bride price is mandatory, while the amount of dowry is often voluntary and usually taken as part of the bride price [26]. Since the 1990s, the cost of marriage in rural China has also been of wide concern to the academic community. The bride price is the most important economic transaction as well as ritual procedure between the kin of the groom and the kin of the bride in the marriages of rural China. It is also a serious burden for the parents who have a son and may even be regarded as a life-long task. In the vast rural areas where the social economy is underdeveloped and the marriage customs are relatively traditional, the capital flow during the marriage conclusion process has a unique generation mechanism and social and economic significance. Analyzing the motivations of parents to pay marriage expenses is important for understanding the existence, prevalence, and changes of marriage transactions in China.

In China, the groom’s family giving the bride’s family some money and goods means the establishment of a new relationship between the two families. This paper specifically discusses marriage expenses in a narrow sense which refers only to the sum of money. In Chinese marriage culture, there are many differences in the complexity of the process, the details of procedures, and the names of the steps in the process [20], and each step is moved forward with money, starting with a visit from a matchmaker. As a symbol of the traditional marriage custom, more importance is attached to matchmaker commissions in the economically underdeveloped areas of central and western China. As the most important ceremony in the marriage process, a marriage banquet exists widely in various regions of the country. The bride price is the man’s compensation for the labor of the woman’s family, also known as the woman’s asking price, which can intuitively reflect the status of both sexes in the marriage market. The price of a marriage house is significantly affected by the local economic market environment and has strong regional differences. The rural men’s marriage expenses in this study include four categories: the matchmaker commission, marriage banquet expenses, bride price, and marriage house expenses, which can more comprehensively outline the basic situation of male marriage expenses in rural China today.

2.2.2. Determinants of Marriage Expenses

Existing studies have analyzed the rising cost of marriage in China from various perspectives. Firstly, from the imbalance of the gender structure in the marriage market and the expansion of the geographical intermarriage circle caused by population migration, the gender imbalance has been exacerbated. In the context of the scarcity of marriageable female resources in the marriage market, women have more dominance and choice in the marriage market. With the rise of the migrant economy, farmers in traditional rural intermarriage circles generally travel outside their area, meaning that the traditional closed intermarriage circles have been broken, and the imbalance of gender structure has made the marriage squeeze of Chinese men in the marriage market more serious in recent years [20]. The dominance of women in the marriage market is constantly being shaped and strengthened, resulting in the rising bride prices [27].

Secondly, cultural factors are important. The bride price is constrained by the local economic foundation and community culture. It is an unspoken price to buy the “right” to inherit the family, and an opportunity cost to invest in increasing the labor force. The amount of the betrothal gift is largely limited by local norms; its connotation and expression have long-term stability and are more ceremonial. Some researchers also pointed out that rising marriage expenses are closely related to the “good face and comparison” atmosphere caused by economic development in rural areas [20]. Driven by this kind of psychology, many villagers believe that the bride price reveals the worth of their daughters. The high bride price shows that their daughters are decent and are not looked down upon by others, so they will ask the husband’s family for high bride price.

Thirdly, intergenerational relations are significant. With the strict implementation of the family planning policy and the change of traditional ideas such as “more children, more happiness”, the scale of rural families has been shrinking, the number of only-child households has increased, and the traditional concept of “many children can support the elderly together” faces challenges. Therefore, parents of both the groom and the bride want to gain a closer relationship through direct financial assistance to the newlyweds. This transformation is also closely related to the traditional intergenerational ethical concept that “completing marriage for children is an important responsibility of parents”.

Fourthly, marriage matching conditions are important. The existing research pays more attention to the flow and connotation of marriage expenses while ignoring the effect of the newlyweds’ match on marriage cost. Combined with the above, this study believes that under the development of urbanization, individual autonomy is rising, and the role of marriage matching is prominent. This study will discuss the relationship between marriage matching and marriage cost through five considerations.

The first consideration is age matching. In today’s era, late marriage has become a common phenomenon, which is not only related to the popularization of higher education and the modern concept of marriage but also to rising marriage expenses [28]. Rural males are still in a low position in the marriage market due to their agricultural household registration and resource conditions, and their competitive advantages are insufficient. Furthermore, the serious male marriage squeeze may prompt them to go to a higher or lower age group to find a spouse so that the marriage expenses may be significantly reduced.

The second consideration is educational level matching. Education is one of the most important indicators of socioeconomic status and has a decisive impact on career achievement and social stratification. A high level of education is conducive to reducing the difficulty of getting married for males and increasing their competitive advantage in the marriage market. While the scale of education has expanded rapidly and educational opportunities have grown rapidly, educational inequality has not yet disappeared; on the contrary, the difference in opportunities for education in urban and rural areas has increased [29]. Due to the differences in access to social resources caused by the dual household registration system that separated urban and rural areas in China, compared with urban men, rural men have fewer resources. In this condition, rural men will significantly reduce the cost of their marriage when they have a higher educational level [30]. Specifically, the bride price and marital house have different meanings in the marriage process in rural China. Bride price, as the beginning of the marriage behavior, represents the sincerity of the men’s family and is a necessary part of the marriage proposal. With social development and ideological transition, bride price forms have been simplified to a certain extent towards monetization. In the marriage market, higher education means better resources, and it guarantees good economic strength in the future; thus, it has a substitution effect of the bride price. In contrast, as the demand for a marital house is rigid, it is difficult to affect and significantly reduce expenses. Therefore, rural men with an educational advantage are more likely to spend less on bride price. Therefore, when the husband is more educated than the wife, it will help to reduce the cost of the bride price.

A further factor is occupational level matching. Occupation per se is not status, but rank in the occupational hierarchy is an important determinant of status [31]. Kalmijn found that there is quite a strong resemblance between the status positions of newlyweds, whether measured by social class, occupational prestige, or level of education [23]. In the Chinese context, a person’s occupational type can represent his/her social status, class, social welfare, and income [3,32]. Combined with the characteristics of public ownership in China’s market economy, occupational types such as “administrative and managerial personnel” are very likely to rely on unit welfare to buy an estate at a relatively favorable price [33]. In addition, a higher occupational status tends to represent higher income and higher parental classes, which make it much easier for these people to buy a marital house. Among all kinds of marriage expenses, the advantage of male occupation may be more closely related to the cost of the marital house. Therefore, when the husband’s occupational class is higher than that of the wife, it will help to reduce the cost of the marital house.

An additional factor is the geographic intermarriage circle. Individual mobility distance is most closely related to the geographic intermarriage circle. Mobility makes rural men integrate into a larger marriage market, which also means they will compete with more men for unmarried women. The geographic intermarriage circle size affects marriage expenses; if a man marries a local woman, he must first give a considerable bride price to the woman’s parents, as well as a large amount of goods and money during the New Year and festivals [34]. If two people come from two provinces that are far away, due to different social customs in the two places, in some cases, the woman’s parents do not only ask a high bride price but also give certain subsidies to the newlyweds because their daughter marries far away. The expansion of the geographical intermarriage circle will reduce the cost of marriage.

The final factor is urbanization types. Urbanization has increased marriage expenses in rural areas [30]. Individual pre-marital mobility distance can distinguish the types of urbanization, which can reflect individual ability, resources, and mobility willingness. The local rural men who migrated in the county (called “in situ urbanization”) before marriage have relatively similar living customs, a more traditional cultural circle, and a face circle, which means they may be more affected by their family cohesion and local customs. In the country, buying a marital house costs less than in urban areas, and the woman is more likely to ask for a marital house. In contrast, the rural males who migrated outside the county (called “long-distance urbanization”) have better individual resources and are less constrained by their families. It is more difficult to give gifts when they get married, and the marriage process is more likely to be simplified. That is to say, the possibility of asking to buy a house is reduced, and the bride family is more likely to ask for the bride price in cash. Therefore, in situ urbanization is more likely to focus on the marital house, while long-distance urbanization is more likely to focus on the bride price.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Data

The data are from a sample survey on rural people’s marriages and families, conducted by the New Urbanization and Sustainable Development research group from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2018. Considering that China’s urbanization process has strong regional differences, this survey mainly focuses on the provinces with low urbanization rates in China at present. According to the ranking of population urbanization rate of China’s provinces in 2017 (http://www.sohu.com/a/275242299_642249, date of visit is 1 November 2019), firstly, 22 provinces with urbanization rates lower than 60% in China’s mainland were selected. Subsequently, the provinces with a net outflow of population (Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Hainan, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Tibet) and remote provinces (Jilin, Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou) were excluded. A total of 11 provinces were finally selected for investigation, including Shandong, Hubei, Hebei, Jiangxi, Anhui, Sichuan, Gansu, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Hunan. These 11 provinces cover the eastern, central, and western regions of China, and both economically developed regions and economically underdeveloped regions. The respondents cover populations who both had or did not have pre-marital migration. Table S1 in the Supplementary Materials shows the sample distribution characteristics and urbanization rate of 11 provinces. This survey uses a combination of convenience sampling and quota sampling and tries to ensure a relatively uniform distribution of gender, age, marital status, and education level. The survey takes various measures to ensure the quality of the actual survey and data processing, includes training before the survey, review and revisiting during the questionnaire recovery process and duplex data entry. Considering that the issue of marriage expenses is relatively sensitive, the investigators and respondents recruited for this survey are from the same village, so they are relatively familiar people, and the environment will have better control over the answers to sensitive questions. The survey obtained 5004 valid samples, and in general, the samples are typical and suitable for in-depth analysis of the problems faced by relevant groups.

3.2. Variables

There are 2188 samples that can be used in this paper. Table S2 in the Supplementary Materials shows the distribution and basic characteristics of the samples.

The dependent variables were marriage expenses and the bride price. Information regarding marriage expenses were collected by asking the respondents “How much do the men spend on your first marriage?”, which specifically includes the marriage banquet, the matchmaker, the marital house (including building a house in rural area or buying an apartment in urban area), and the bride price.

There were five independent variables. Under the guidance of marriage exchange theory, this paper aims to focus on marriage-matching and consider the impact of urbanization on the cost of marriage for rural men. The five core independent variables are as follows. (1) Age matching, calculated by comparing the age of couples, is divided into three categories: the wife is older than the husband, the husband is 0–3 years older than a wife, the husband is 4 years or more than 4 years older than a wife (hereinafter referred to as “wife is older”, “husband is older 0–3”, “husband is older 4+”). (2) Educational level matching, calculated by comparing the educational attainment of couples, is divided into three categories: the wife has a higher educational level, the husband and wife have the same educational level, and the husband has a higher educational level (hereinafter referred to as “wife higher”, “same”, “husband higher”). (3) Occupational level matching, calculated by comparing the occupational level of couples, is divided into three categories: the wife has a higher occupational level, the husband and wife have the same occupational level, and the husband has a higher occupational level (hereinafter referred to as “wife higher”, “same”, “husband higher”). (4) Geographic intermarriage circle, calculated by asking “Where is your spouse from?”, is divided into five categories. These five categories are: the same village, same town, same county, same city, and other cities. (5) Urbanization type is calculated by comparing the time of respondent’s “the year you first leave rural areas to work” and “the first marriage year”. This is a binary variable, including whether or not they were pre-marital migrants. Furthermore, the pre-marital migrant group were also asked if “the workplace you first went out to work, was in 1. this town, 2. this county, 3. other counties, 4. other cities, 5. other provinces”. Samples who chose option 1 and 2 and those with “no pre-marital migration” are classified as “in-situ urbanization”, and samples who choose options 3, 4, and 5 are classified as “long-distance urbanization”.

As for the control variables, this study uses the usual socio-demographic control variables, such as age, education, occupational level, and the age of first marriage.

Table 1. Measurement and distribution of variables.

Variables	Proportion
Independent Variables
Age matching
wife is older	18.19
husband is older 0–3	64.41
husband is older 4+	17.41
Education level matching
wife higher	16.33
same	54.20
husband higher	29.47
Occupation level matching *
wife higher	12.92
same	55.41
husband higher	31.67
Geographic intermarriage circle
same village	14.82
same town	36.06
same county	25.28
same city	10.14
other cities	13.69
Urbanization type
in-situ urbanization	55.14
long-distance urbanization	44.86
Regional factors
proportion of tertiary industry by province over the years
Per capita GDP by province over the years
Consumer price index by province over the years
Control Variables
Household registration matching
intra-household marriage	88.78
cross-household marriage	11.22
Age of the husband
under 35 years old	35.24
35 years old or above	64.76
The educational level of the husband
primary school and below	15.65
junior school	48.95
high/technical/technical secondary school	24.52
college and above	10.87
Occupational level of husband
lower/middle-lower	53.60
middle	34.70
middle-upper	5.71
upper	5.98
The age of the first marriage for the husband
under 23 years old	38.16
23 to 25 years old	38.16
25 years old or above	23.67
Occupational level of husband’s father
lower/middle-lower	84.35
middle	11.36
middle-upper/upper	4.29

* The upper layer includes “leaders of party and government organs and institutions, leaders of enterprises or businesses, private entrepreneurs”, the middle and upper layer include “professional and technical personnel”, the middle layer includes “clerks, individual industrial and commercial households, skilled workers”, the middle and lower layer include “commercial service workers, unskilled workers, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery personnel”, and the lower layer includes “unemployed or semi-unemployed”.

shows the measurement and distribution of variables.

3.3. Methods

Firstly, this paper conducts a descriptive analysis of the marriage expenses profile of Chinese rural men. Secondly, we use the latent profile analysis method (LPA) to identify the potential types of rural men’s marriage expenses. The LPA method can classify people and individuals into the same category through similar responses, which can ensure that the internal differences among categories are the smallest and the differences among categories are the largest. Compared with traditional classification methods, the results of LPA are more objective and accurate, and it has more advantages in heterogeneous classification research. This study uses the tidy LPA package in the R language to explain the relationship between explicit indicators (types of marriage expense) through potential continuous variables (marriage expense), which uses the former to estimate the tendency of the latter. Thirdly, this study uses the multinomial logit model to explore the determinants of different types of rural men’s marriage expenses and uses the OLS model to explore the determinants of each type’s marriage expenses.

4. Results

4.1. Overview of Rural Men’s Marriage Expenses

Figure 1 shows that the proportions of the various marriage expenses of rural men have experienced changes in the past 40 years. Before 1992, the composition of marriage expenses varied greatly and the homogeneity was low. After that, the cost of marriage generally begins to be composed of four elements, and its proportions tend to be stable. The marital house is the highest proportion of men’s marriage expenses, which is kept at 50–60%, followed by the bride price, which fluctuates between 20% and 40%, and stabilized at around 30% after 2010. The marriage banquet expense has been decreasing continuously in recent years and stabilized at 10% after 2016. The matchmaker commission had been reduced to less than 1% since 1990, but it did not disappear. On the one hand, it shows that the tradition of being “introduced through a reliable matchmaker” still exists in China’s rural marriage market; on the other hand, it also proves that some unmarried men in the rural marriage market still rely on matchmakers to find a spouse.

4.2. Type Identification of Rural Men’s Marriage Expenses

Although the marriage expenses of rural men have several fixed items (i.e., marriage banquet, matchmaker), the implied meaning of each item is completely different; for example, the marriage banquet expenses mean that the local culture attaches great importance to etiquette, and the marital house expenses signify the impact of housing prices on marriage. Therefore, this study tries to explore the proportion of these items and classify them to reflect the economic pressure of marriage faced by rural men more clearly. To select the best classification results, this study mainly refers to the sample-adjusted likelihood ratio tests, including BLRT (Bootstrapped Likelihood Ratio Test), AIC (Akaike Information Guidelines), Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), and Entropy. Among them, BLRT is used to compare the two nested models, which indicates that the fitting of the K-type model is better than that of the k-1 type model if p < 0.05. The smaller the AIC and BIC information index, the better the model fitting. Entropy is used to evaluate the accuracy of classification. The larger the value, the more accurate the classification is.

Between one and four categories are established by using the proportion of rural men’s marriage expenses. The fitting index of the LPA of rural men’s marriage expenses is shown in

Table 2. Fitting index of LPA of rural men’s marriage expenses (N = 2188).

Category Number	AIC	BIC	Entropy	BLRTp	Probability
1	−5353.39	−5307.87	1.00	/	1
2	−11,105.58	−11,008.84	0.84	0.000	0.33/0.67
3	−13,256.39	−13,108.43	0.86	0.000	0.24/0.59/0.17
4	−14,347.24	−14,148.06	0.87	0.000	0.42/0.18/0.24/0.16

. The results show that when the number of categories is increased in turn, the AIC and BIC values decrease continuously, while the Entropy reaches the maximum in the four categories, and the BLRT value reaches a significant level. This shows that it is most appropriate to divide the cost of marriage for rural men into four categories (Table 2).

Figure 2 further provides the distribution and characteristics of rural men’s marriage expenses in four categories: the first category is that the proportions are similar between the expense of the marital house and the bride price, which is higher than that of the marriage banquet and matchmaker commission, and we name it the “bride price & marital house” (Type 1, paying equally for the expenses of bride price and marriage house). The second category is characterized by even proportion of all items and a slightly higher proportion of expense on the marriage banquet, which is named the “mixed” (Type 2, paying equally for the expenses of matchmaker, wedding, bride price, and marriage house). The third category is characterized by the highest proportion of expense on the bride price and a lower proportion of expense on other items, which we name the “bride price biased” (Type 3, paying more for the expenses of bride price). Finally, the fourth category is characterized by the highest proportion of expense on the marital house, correspondingly called the “marital house biased” (Type 4, paying more for the expenses of marriage house). The sample distributions in Types 1, 2, 3, and 4 are 920, 382, 530, and 356, respectively. This result will serve as the basis for subsequent empirical analysis.

Table 3. Average cost of four types of rural men’s marriage expenses (Yuan, RMB).

Types	Marriage Banquet	Matchmaker	Marital House	Bride Price	Total Expenses
bride price & marital house	13,735.63	556.50	42,333.07	28,736.60	85,361.79
mixed	11,782.49	1881.56	7301.60	5184.95	26,150.60
bride price biased	9750.13	513.08	4781.29	39,263.51	54,308.02
marital house biased	9625.38	331.31	149,222.30	19,218.62	178,397.70

shows the average cost of marriage for each type identified above. It can be seen that there is a difference in the total amount spent on each type of marriage expense. The “marital house biased” category is the ultimate type of financial pressure for rural men, who have to pay 178,397.70 Yuan to get married. Followed by the “bride price & marital house”, the marriage expenses for this type of rural men are only about half of the previous category. The total expenses of the “bride price biased” category is lower than the “bride price & marital house” category, and the “mixed” category is the lowest among all four types. So far, it is obvious that the marital house is the main reason for the heavy economic pressure on rural men.

4.3. Influencing Factors of Rural Men’s Marriage Expense Types

Table 4. Multinomial logit analysis of influencing factors of rural men’s marriage expense types.

Reference Item: Bride Price & Marital House	Mixed		Bride Price Biased		Marital House Biased
	Coef.	S.E.	Coef.	S.E.	Coef.	S.E.
Independent variable
Age matching (older wife)
husband is 0–3 years older	0.24	0.22	0.04	0.18	−0.01	0.21
husband is 4 or more years older	0.53 *	0.29	0.23	0.25	−0.33	0.30
Education matching (wife higher)
same	−0.31	0.23	−0.01	0.19	0.02	0.24
husband higher	0.11	0.29	−0.13 *	0.25	0.13	0.29
Occupation class matching (wife higher)
same	0.17	0.27	0.09	0.20	0.04	0.24
husband higher	0.58	0.35	−0.05	0.26	0.44 *	0.31
Geographic intermarriage circle (same village)
same town	0.11	0.25	−0.14	0.21	−0.06	0.25
same county	0.37	0.26	0.18	0.22	−0.01	0.26
same city	0.13	0.25	0.01	0.28	0.29	0.31
other city	0.45	0.30	0.03	0.25	0.26	0.29
Urbanization type (in-situ urbanization)
long-distance urbanization	−0.09	0.17	0.27 **	0.14	0.06	0.17
Region
proportion of tertiary industry by province over the years	−2.01	1.85	2.60 *	1.44	5.75 **	1.86
Per capita GDP by province over the years	−0.03 **	0.01	−0.01	0.07	0.01	0.21
Consumer price index by province over the years	0.02 *	0.01	0.03	0.01	0.01	0.01
Control variable
Husband’s age (under 35 years old)
35 years old or above	0.58 **	0.26	−0.42 *	0.23	0.01	0.27
Education of husband (primary school and below)
junior school	−0.71 **	0.23	−0.17	0.21	0.19	2.08
high/technical/technical secondary school	−0.39	0.29	0.02	0.26	0.39	0.33
college and above	−1.10 **	0.43	−0.39	0.34	−0.08	0.42
Husband’s occupational class (lower/middle-lower)
middle	−0.28	0.26	−0.18	0.20	0.18	0.24
middle-upper	−0.20	0.43	0.14	0.33	0.96	0.48
upper	−0.31	0.41	0.07	0.35	0.42 *	0.39
Husband’s first marriage age (under 23 years old)
23 to 25 years old	−0.26	0.19	−0.24	0.16	−0.18	0.19
25 years old or above	−0.01	0.27	−0.37	0.23	0.20	0.26
Father’s occupational class (lower/middle-lower)
middle	0.19	0.27	0.11	0.22	0.43 *	0.24
middle-upper/upper	0.51	0.37	−0.34	0.37	0.09	0.40
Constant term	−2.09 **	1.76	−1.27 **	1.62	−0.86 *	1.91
Logarithmic likelihood value	3578.92

** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1.

shows the multinomial logit analysis results of determinants of rural men’s marriage expense types. Taking the “bride price & marital house” as the reference item, in terms of age matching, compared with older wives, when the husband is 4 or more years older than the wife, the type of rural men’s marriage expenses is more likely to be “mixed” and the overall marriage cost is lower. The differences in the educational level matching of couples did not show a significant difference in the impact of various types of marriage costs, which may be due to the small educational matching differences of the survey samples. According to Table 1 above, the proportion of homogeneous education matching between husbands and wives is more than half. In the occupational class matching, compared with the wife, when the husband has the advantage of an occupational class, it will significantly promote the type of marriage cost to be “marital house biased”; the total expense of marriage is higher, and the proportion of the marriage room’s cost is larger. Differences in geographical intermarriage circles did not have a significant impact on each type of marriage cost for rural men, but the type of urbanization showed a significant impact. When rural men migrate outside the county before marriage, it will significantly increase the possibility of their marriage expense type to be the “bride price biased”, but it has no significant influence on the cost of the marital house.

In terms of regional variables, the higher the proportion of the tertiary industry, the greater the probability that the marriage expense type is “bride price biased”. And the per capita GDP is proportional to the possibility of “bride price & marital house”. With the increase of CPI, the type of marriage cost of rural men is more likely to be “mixed”. In conclusion, age matching, occupational class matching, and differences in urbanization types are the main factors affecting the types of rural men’s marriage costs. Among the control variables, older groups are more likely to be “mixed” with lower total marriage costs than younger groups. With the rise of the individual education level of rural men, the probability of the type of marriage cost being “bride price & marital house” increases, while the rise of the individual occupational class and father’s occupational class increases the probability of the “marital house biased” category.

Table 5. OLS analyses of influencing factors of cost of each type of rural men’s marriage expenses.

	Bride Price & Marital House		Mixed		Bride Price Biased		Marital House Biased
	Coef.	S.E.	Coef.	S.E.	Coef.	S.E.	Coef.	S.E.
Independent variable
Age matching (older wife)
husband is 0–3 years older	−0.20	0.25	0.21	0.26	0.15	0.14	0.01	0.17
husband is 4 or more years older	−0.44	0.35	0.33 *	0.33	0.20	0.20	0.11	0.26
Education matching (wife higher)
same	−0.13	0.27	−0.43	0.26	−0.41 **	0.15	0.47	0.20
husband higher	−0.82 **	0.34	0.65	0.32	−0.40 *	0.20	0.28	0.24
Occupation class matching (wife higher)
same	−0.55	0.27	−0.57	0.32	−0.16	0.16	−0.16	0.21
husband higher	0.27 **	0.35	−0.41	0.40	0.26	0.22	−0.59 **	0.27
Geographic intermarriage circle (same village)
same town	0.22	0.29	0.76 **	0.29	0.19	0.17	−0.07	0.21
same county	0.22	0.31	0.65 **	0.29	−0.03	0.17	0.23	0.23
same city	0.11	0.39	0.49	0.40	−0.08	0.22	−0.19	0.26
other city	−0.39	0.36	−0.12	0.34	0.24	0.20	−0.01	0.24
Urbanization type (in-situ urbanization)
long-distance urbanization	−0.03	0.20	−0.20	0.19	0.12 **	0.13	0.04	0.14
Region
proportion of tertiary industry by province over the years	4.62 **	2.27	2.02	2.32	4.66 ***	1.37	4.95 **	1.69
Per capita GDP by province over the years	0.04 ***	0.01	0.01 **	0.01	0.01 ***	0.73	0.02	0.05
Consumer price index by province over the years	−0.01	0.02	−0.04 **	0.14	−0.02	0.01	−0.02 *	0.01
Control variable
Husband’s age (under 35 years old)
35 years old or above	−0.03	0.35	−0.81 **	0.33	−0.48 **	0.19	−1.06 ***	0.224
Education of husband (primary school and below)
junior school	0.78 **	0.31	0.13	0.25	0.38 **	0.16	0.28	0.25
high/technical/technical secondary school	1.40 ***	0.38	0.51	0.32	0.47 **	0.20	0.50 *	0.29
college and above	1.34 **	0.47	0.65	0.51	0.43	0.27	0.28	0.37
Husband’s occupational class (lower/middle-lower)
middle	−0.24	0.27	0.60	0.31	0.05	0.16	0.35	0.21
middle-upper	−0.26	0.47	0.06	0.52	−0.13	0.26	0.54	0.42
upper	−0.08	0.45	0.43	0.40	0.11	0.27	0.25 *	0.30
Husband’s first marriage age (under 23 years old)								-
23 to 25 years old	0.19	0.23	−0.47 **	0.22	0.17	0.12	−0.08	0.19
25 years old or above	0.66 **	0.32	−0.19	0.31	0.02	0.19	0.21	0.34
Father’s occupational class (lower/middle-lower)
middle	0.41	0.31	0.42	0.33	−0.11	0.18	0.11	0.19
middle-upper/upper	0.35	0.46	0.25	0.40	−0.07	0.32	0.21	0.34
Constant term	8.58 ***	2.35	13.14 ***	1.98	9.48 ***	1.34	11.51 ***	1.51
Logarithmic likelihood value	2748.46		769.88		1028.20		619.08

*** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1.

further presents the OLS analyses results of the influencing factors of the cost of each type of rural men’s marriage expense. First, in age matching, only when the type of rural men’s marriage expenses is “mixed”, will a larger age difference between husband and wife reduce the spending in this category. Second, compared with the education level of wives, the educational level advantage of rural men has a significant substitution effect with the cost of marriage. This effect is significant in the “bride price & marital house” category and “bride price biased” category. Compared with the high and just-needed cost of marital housing, the cost of the bride price will be more affected by the supply and demand characteristics of the marriage market and the quality of both men and women, and its substitution effect with education level is stronger. Third, in terms of the occupational class matching of husband and wife, consistent with the above findings, the husband’s occupational class advantage significantly reduces the marriage cost of the “bride price & marital house” and “marital house biased” categories, which further highlights the impact of the rising occupational class of men. Fourth, in the matching of husband and wife’s origins, compared with the closer geographical intermarriage circle of “same village”, when the intermarriage circle is expanded to “same town” or “same county”, the “mixed” type’s expenses will increase significantly, and this factor has no significant correlation with other types. In the “mixed” marriage cost, since the marriage banquet, matchmaker, bride price, and marital house expenses all account for a certain proportion, it can be understood that the expansion of the geographical intermarriage circle is a comprehensive effect of its various marriage expenses. Fifth, as far as the type of urbanization is concerned, compared with the “in-situ urbanization” where individuals move closer, when rural men achieve long-distance urbanization, the expenses for the “bride price biased” category will increase significantly.

In terms of regional variables, the proportion of the tertiary industry by province over the years is directly proportional to the expenses of the “bride price & marital house”, “bride price biased”, and “marital house biased” categories. Regions with higher urbanization rates have higher marriage costs for rural men. The increase of regional per capita GDP will significantly increase the probability of being in “bride price & marital house”, “mixed”, and “bride price biased” categories. The consumer price index is inversely proportional to the expenses of the “mixed” and “marital house biased” groups. Among the control variables, compared with a rural man under the age of 35, an older rural man in the “mixed”, “bride price biased”, and “marital house biased” pays less, and the younger group bears a greater financial pressure when marrying. The increase of individual education level of rural males will significantly promote their spending in the “bride price & marital house” group. Furthermore, the rise of an individual’s occupational class will significantly promote rural men’s spending in the “marital house biased” category. Compared with the early marriage group, when the age of first marriage is delayed to 23–26 years old, the marriage cost of rural men in the “mixed” group is significantly reduced. When the age is delayed to 26 years old or older, the “bride price & marital house” expenses are significantly reduced too.

In conclusion, there is a significant substitution effect between rural men’ educational level advantage and expenses in the “bride price biased” category. Furthermore, the rural men’ occupational class advantage has the most significant substitution effect on the expenses of the “marital house biased” group.

5. Discussion

Poverty is a worldwide problem. Poverty due to the high cost of marriage is still common in rural China. This study contributes quantitatively to the problem of high marriage expenses in rural China. This study examined the typological features and determinants of rural men’s marriage expenses.

Firstly, with recent social and economic development, rural men’s marital house and bride price accounted for the highest proportion of the total cost, and their importance continued to be prominent. Through the LPA, it is found that rural men’s marriage expenses can be classified into four types. The average value of the total expenses of marriage in the “marital house biased” category is the highest, reaching more than 170,000 Yuan, followed by the “bride price & marital house” category, which exceeds 80,000 Yuan, then followed by the “bride price biased” category. The “mixed” category is the lowest expense type, for which the average value is more than 20,000 Yuan. This provides an important empirical basis for a clear understanding of the types of rural men’s marriage expenses in China.

Secondly, there are differences in the influencing factors of different rural men’s marriage expense types. Rural men have lower marriage costs and are more likely to be “mixed” when the age difference between husband and wife is greater. There is a significant positive correlation between the husband’s occupational class advantage and the marriage expenses type being “marital house biased”; the total cost of the marriage is higher and the proportion of expense on the marital house is larger. When rural men migrated outside the county before getting married, it would significantly increase the possibility that their marriage expenses type would be “bride price biased”.

Thirdly, in the multinomial logit analysis of rural men’s marriage expense types, it is found that in the “mixed” category, with the expansion of the age difference between the couple, the payment is significantly reduced. The educational level advantage and rural men’s marriage expenses have a significant substitution effect, and this effect is significant in the “bride price & marital house” and “bride price biased” categories. The advantage of the husband’s occupational class will significantly reduce the costs in the “bride price & marital house” and “marital house biased” categories, which highlights the weakening effect of the rising occupational class of men on the marital house cost. When the geographical intermarriage circle expands, the expenses of “mixed” category will increase; when rural men migrated out of the county before marriage, their “bride price biased” cost will increase significantly. The proportion of the tertiary industry in the region, the per capita GDP, and the rural men’s marriage expenses are significantly positively correlated. In general, the younger generation of rural men bear greater economic pressures, and rises in individual educational level and occupational class has a significant role in promoting their marriage expenses.

The rising cost of marriage reflects the progress of China’s social and economic development and individuals’ pursuit of a higher quality of life. However, the high cost of marriage also leads to a bad social atmosphere and social problems of excessive objectification of marriage and the weakening of emotions. This often discourages many rural men who are at a disadvantage in the marriage market, and may even encourage the family to borrow a lot of money to assist their son in marrying, financial pressure which seriously affects many rural families and is very likely to further delay the age of first marriage, resulting in a decline in fertility and unstable marriages, thereby affecting demographic structure and family patterns. Through the analysis of the marriage cost for rural men in China and its relationship with marriage matching, it is found that improving the educational level and vocational skills training of rural men in China will effectively increase their competitiveness in marriage market, thereby reducing their marriage expenses. At the same time, advocating in situ urbanization can help reduce the high marriage costs that migrants have to pay due to long-distance migration.

The limitation of this study is that the paper uses special survey data to explore the characteristics and influencing factors of rural male marriage expenses in 11 provinces with low urbanization rates across China. The applicability of the findings to other rural areas in China is yet to be verified.