主题｜Topic：Ignorance is whose bliss? The repeal of compulsory pre-marital health examination and marital outcomes in rural China（Information Asymmetry on Health, Marital Sorting and Subjective Well-being: Evidence from China）
时间｜Time：06.21（周五）15: 30-17:00
地点｜Venue：文澴楼709会议室｜Meeting Room 709，WENHUAN
主办单位｜Organizer：文澜学院
承办单位｜Operator：北京大学-中南财经政法大学新结构经济学研究中心
主讲｜Speaker
韩莉，香港科技大学经济学副教授，博士毕业于哈佛大学。研究领域为发展经济学和劳动经济学。研究成果在 The Economic Journal（2篇）, Journal of Development Economics（2篇）和 Journal of Public Economics 等国际顶级学术刊物发表。
摘要｜Abstract
Information asymmetry in marriage market can distort the positive assortative matching under complementarity and reduce matching quality. Among partner’s attributes, health is important for household production but easy-to-hide. Taking advantage of the repeal of mandatory premarital health examination (PHE) in China, this paper estimates the causal effect of information asymmetry of partner’s health on marital sorting and subjective well-being after marriage. We exploit the difference of the PHE enforcement across provinces and difference of marriage time to construct a difference-in-differences strategy for causal identification. We find that the repeal of mandatory PHE results in significant decrease of people’s after-marriage subjective well-being. The effect is larger on male and people with better health. The data patterns are consistent with the theoretical predictions that the repeal of mandatory PHE decreases the positive assortative matching of health and child health.
