
Marriage Costs in China Are Out of Control - tango24
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-29/why-marriage-costs-in-china-are-out-of-control
======
puranjay
I would like to see an equivalent study on Indian weddings. All the people I
know who got married recently spent between $50-$100k on their wedding. My own
wedding was about $50k. Food alone was nearly $20k (over 1200 guests were
invited - which was on the low end)

~~~
williamdclt
Genuine question: how is it possible to invite 1200 people? I can't imagine
that you and your partner know 600 people each, I'd have a hard time finding
100 people to invite if I needed too

~~~
throw930336
In Chinese weddings, when you invite your friends, you also invite their
relatives and families as well. It can definitely add up.

And it's not just you inviting people, but your parents and their parents.

It's not uncommon to actually not know 2/3s of the people at your wedding.

The best part however is that each guest will give you a "red envelope" of
money. It's basically the wedding gift. The more people you invite, the more
money you can possibly make (even after the expenses of the wedding).

This money is then used for the new coupe to start their family.

~~~
rahimnathwani
I was chatting with a retired couple. They told me that wedding red envelopes
are the majority of their monthly expenditure. They're at the age where all
their friends' kids are getting married. (They don't live in the capital, so I
guess their rent is cheap or they own their apartment.)

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chaostheory
Things have already changed. It's becoming more and more common in rural China
to marry South East Asian women from places like Vietnam and Cambodia... which
of course potentially spreads the problem

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-
many-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-
men/?utm_term=.855ea8d420a4)

------
tomcam
These are house down payment prices.

My wife and I eloped and were married for a total of $270 in Las Vegas (25
years ago). It is easily one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

I have heard lots of people complain that they spent too much time, money and
psychological goodwill on their elaborate marriage events, but I have never
heard someone say they regretted a simple inexpensive wedding.

~~~
tajen
There are studies that the larger the bed (at home) and the fancier the
reception, the shorter the marriage. But more friends means longer marriage.
Basically a barbecue with heaps of mates predicts the longest marriages.

Of course the stats above are the land of correlations-not-causations; larger
bed may mean financially more stable therefore more independant and less
dependent on the partner’s income, or similar. Still fun ;)

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quotemstr
Markets always appear next to scarcity, and laws against market operations
always drive transactions underground, because supply and demand must be made
to meet somehow. Without expressing approval per se of what's happening in
China, I do have to express a total lack of surprise that people react to
scarcity in one area in the same way they react to scarcity in every other.

Extreme gender imbalances are societally destabilizing, and the Chinese
government, which is _obsessed_ with social stability, should have reacted
much faster once it noticed the gender gap in newborns. Now, it's too late,
and a generation will be unhappy.

~~~
watwut
Are gender imbalances destabilising historically? It woild be interesting to
see the history. After wars there was lack of men in some areas. Excess of men
was during gold rush, in Australia and is in silicon valley.

(I am not sure how much it proves or disproved theory.)

~~~
geoffmunn
As a positive twist, women got the vote in New Zealand partly because of fears
that a surplus of rowdy men 'on the frontier' would cause problems. Giving
women the vote would give families more leverage in Parliament.

~~~
jacobush
Fears by who(m)? There must be some interesting partisan politics you are
barely hinting at.

~~~
geoffmunn
[https://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-was-the-first-
co...](https://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-was-the-first-country-
where-women-won-the-right-to-vote-103219)

Women as moral citizens

As a “colonial frontier”, New Zealand had a surplus of men, especially in
resource towns. Pragmatically, this placed a premium on women for their part
as wives, mothers and moral compasses.

There was a fear of a chaotic frontier full of marauding single men. This
colonial context saw conservative men who supported family values supporting
suffrage. During the 1880s, depression and its accompanying poverty, sexual
licence and drunken disorder further enhanced women’s value as settling
maternal figures. Women voters promised a stabilising effect on society.

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rick22
Same in india its called the dowry system. But now women are employed more and
guess what its not changing as much it should be. Its strange that the
educated employed women is expecting dowry from her parents to give it to her
husbands(in most cases). The core problem is its considered a status issue. If
the grand marriages are not celebrated and looked down then this might change.

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beerlord
I think the title is misleading: its not really marriage costs, its a payment
to the bride/parents to account for the gender disparity in China caused by
sex-selective abortions.

These bride costs should be allowed to climb infinitely, because it will serve
as an incentive for families to have girls - and actually sex-selectively
abort boys.

Unfortunately we are seeing all this in the West, where Asian migrants to
countries like Australia are still selectively aborting girls. The difference
is that other ethnicities are not, so those Asian boys can then grow up to
marry girls from other communities, and a female shortage is pushed onto the
whole of society. Its basically a tragedy of the commons.

~~~
rectang
> _These bride costs should be allowed to climb infinitely, because it will
> serve as an incentive for families to have girls_

Wow, a market correction to counteract societal undervaluation of females. If
it could happen that would be profoundly constructive, but attitudes about
gender are durable. It's not hard to imagine that instead of letting the price
rise to incentivize an increase in supply, we could see see price fixing and
rationing instead: the exertion of greater control over scarce resources and
backwards progress in women's rights.

~~~
tomjen3
How would you have price fixing and rationing? At most you could have that on
the legal market, but the black market would never tolerate that, and it would
only drive the (unofficial) price for women even higher.

Besides a great deal of the reasons the girls were aborted or killed were
because in China a parent can count only on the support of their sons, not
because Chinese parents don't love their daughters.

~~~
rectang
> _How would you have price fixing and rationing?_

For example, by enacting laws which retard women's economic and geographic
mobility, so that fewer are able to leave the local market.

> _not because Chinese parents don 't love their daughters._

Devaluation of women as a class is entirely compatible with love for
individuals.

------
rahimnathwani
"they’ll likely drive bride-price transactions underground — and possibly to
new heights as parents demand a risk premium for paying up."

Eh? Wouldn't parents demand a risk _discount_ for paying up?

~~~
richardknop
Supply and demand. Demand is much higher than supply therefor parents of the
girl have a lot of leverage. Price will go up.

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plouffy
Interesting article. I'm a little surprised on how abruptly the article just
seems to end, the author suggests possible solutions to the problem, but
doesn't argue them just presents them.

~~~
powerapple
it is not a problem. marriage will need stable economical base. most time, the
money from both family will go into fund the couple's life, as deposit for an
apartment, purchase of a car or some sort. I would recommend that do not go
into marriage without a stable finance. The social system in western countries
of course are different, people don't have to worry about these issues.

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hkai
I am planning to hopefully marry my girlfriend in the next couple of years and
her parents are already asking for "at least a small amount like 10,000 USD",
because "I'm white anyway", meaning I must be rich.

Taking into account all the abuse she had to take from them, and their lazy
and useless way of life, they're not getting a penny from me.

Many people though feel powerless to resist and ruin themselves financially by
paying it.

~~~
amrx431
Same shit is happening in India. If you dont have a H1B and never worked in
US, good luck finding a girl. I am 27 right now and that too a low caste. I am
seriously contemplating giving up hopes of marriage and remaining single. Will
be tough as I dont have a family. All my family members were killed when I was
young. I have stopped bothering and now just bury myself in work and reading
to avoid the darkness.

~~~
logicchains
Don't give up hope. If India is anything like China, independent, educated
young people are much more likely to make marriage decisions for love rather
than money. The key thing to realise is that, if someone will only marry you
for your financial status rather than love they'll probably be a terrible
spouse, and similarly if they'd let their parents make their marriage decision
for them they're also probably not the kind of person you want to marry. If
they care about your caste, then they're a horrible racist and you certainly
wouldn't want to marry them.

If you go to a big city and hang out at the kind of places educated,
independent young people go to, you might be surprised at how open-minded the
people you meet are. Particularly art-related places; people who pursue an
artistic career have potentially already demonstrated a preference for
following one's heart over financial concerns.

~~~
user5994461
As my girlfriend would say. It comes as a package, the person has her
feelings, body, character, social status, and family background, etc...

It takes more than "love" to bond and have a lasting relationship. It's good
advice to look for people who are somewhat similar.

------
blfr
_A good start would be a law that ensures a woman’s claim on marital property
in the case of a divorce. Current Chinese law makes no such provision, and
thus provides a strong disincentive to marry and a very powerful incentive to
charge higher bride prices._

We have laws like this in Europe. Marriages keep happening later and TFRs keep
plummeting. Why would it work any different in China.

Journalists always push their prefferred policies even when there's no proof
they solve the very clearly stated problem. Subsidize kindergartens!
Mandatory, paid maternal leaves! All while populations that implemented them
keep collapsing.

~~~
liftbigweights
Another false trope pushed by everyone...

"Women are marrying later and having less kids because of career concerns,
lack of maternity leave and child benefits."

The countries with the best maternity leave and child benefits have the oldest
marriage and lowest birth rates.

And japan, where most women give up their jobs once married to start families
and where the government pays women to have children have one of the lowest
birth rates in the world.

So it's not career/jobs, it's not maternity leave, it's not child benefits.
Could it be societal? Media? Education?

~~~
buckminster
It's contraception. The solution is for the government to randomly introduce
placebos into the contraceptive supply. Or just accept that, given the choice,
people don't want kids that much.

~~~
stonecraftwolf
This. This thread is killing me. This might be the only comment so far to even
consider women as having agency. When you give women control over their own
bodies and equal enough rights to support autonomy — so, treat them like
people, basically - it turns out they don’t want to have so many kids, because
growing and birthing humans is incredibly taxing and traumatic. The trauma, in
particular, is weirdly something that people don’t talk to young women about,
and that often remains hidden from view. Reach a certain age (as a woman) and
get alone in a room with other women of a certain age and the stories are
absolutely harrowing. Of the women I’ve known personally who have given birth,
all but one had PTSD from the experience.

I am, frankly, dreading the replies to this comment, as the thread already
tilts heavily towards the sort of dehumanizing abstraction of women’s rights
that often precedes more explicitly misogynist arguments cloaked in
utilitarianism, so I will just say that if you consider coercing women into
traumatizing and often debilitating situations to be an acceptable “cost” of a
hypothetical economically optimal birth rate, I do not consider you to be
capable of engaging in good faith and will not respond.

I would also suggest that concerns about “birth rate” or other abstracted
metrics are often a screen for concerns — from men — about access to sex. I
mean, in the context of intensifying climate change, a decreasing birth rate
is not really our biggest problem as a species. It might actually be an asset.

~~~
adventured
There were the famous studies from a few years ago in Israel and Germany that
sparked a small cultural spat in the West about regretting motherhood and
having a child being a source of immense unhappiness.[1][2] It's of course
obvious why they generated so much outrage, centuries of propaganda about
motherhood being bliss and the highest calling for women.

To quote from the WaPo article below (some people may not be able to read it):

"it turns out that having a child can have a pretty strong negative impact on
a person's happiness, according to a new study published in the journal
Demography. In fact, on average, the effect of a new baby on a person's life
in the first year is devastatingly bad — worse than divorce, worse than
unemployment and worse even than the death of a partner."

"Researchers Rachel Margolis and Mikko Myrskylä followed 2,016 Germans who
were childless at the time the study began until at least two years after the
birth of their first child. Respondents were asked to rate their happiness
from 0 (completely dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied) in response to
the question, "How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?""

"On average, new parenthood led to a 1.4 unit drop in happiness. That's
considered very severe. To put things in perspective, previous studies have
quantified the impact of other major life events on the same happiness scale
in this way: divorce, the equivalent of a 0.6 "happiness unit" drop;
unemployment, a one-unit drop; and the death of a partner a one-unit drop."

[1] [https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-israeli-study-
regretting...](https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-israeli-study-regretting-
motherhood-debate-rages-in-germany/)

[2] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2015/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2015/08/11/the-most-depressing-statistic-imaginable-about-being-a-
new-parent/)

~~~
fastball
So is the solution for women to stop having children and for humanity to die
off?

Also, I think the study needs to be _much_ more longitudinal than "2 years
on". Arguably the pay off for having children comes much, much later. For
some, the pay off doesn't really come until they have grandchildren.

Yes, having children is often a monumental PITA. But humans are social
animals, and nothing is really comparable to fill that hole than having a
family of your own. The question as posed by the study is silly: yes, you
might find less day-to-day happiness if your child is screaming all night long
and you need to feed them and change their shitty diapers. But if the question
had been 10 years on, and you asked those same mothers "do you regret having
children", you would get a very different answer.

~~~
ForHackernews
> So is the solution for women to stop having children and for humanity to die
> off?

What a ridiculous false dichotomy. Earth has a huge (and increasing) number of
humans on it. We are in far greater danger from unsustainable depletion of
natural resources than we are "dying off" from gradually declining birthrates.

~~~
davidiach
If we don't maintain the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman, the
worlds population will eventually shrink exponentially. If that doesn't scare
you, I don't know what will.

~~~
ForHackernews
Why is that scary? Human civilization might be much more sustainable with a
billion people, rather than currently-predicted peak of 10 billion.

I'm much more worried about climate change leading to war and famine than I am
about women voluntarily choosing to have fewer children. As far as I can see,
population decline is only a problem because our current economic system
assumes endless growth.

~~~
fastball
If women consistently have < 2 children the population won't stabilize at 1
billion.

~~~
ForHackernews
Ok, get back to me when world population < 750 million. Then we can worry
about depopulation.

In the meantime, our species has much more urgently pressing issues.

~~~
fastball
Our _species_ really doesn't have more pressing issues.

Fucking the environment is very unlikely to destroy humanity, and that is
really the only concern of any _species_.

As conscientious pieces of a greater whole, however, there are definitely more
pressing issues.

