How Status Inheritance Rules Affect Marital Sorting: Theory and Evidence from Urban China

Using a matching model, we show that marital sorting by status tends to decline as parental statuses become less complementary in determining their children's status. Our test explores a policy change in China in which men are granted the same rights as women in passing residency permits (hukou) to their children regardless of their spouse's hukou - a change resulting in a less complementary status inheritance technology. We find that this change disrupted the previously rigid sorting by hukou and that the position of local men in the urban marriage market improved, whereas that of local women deteriorated.