This paper studies the effects of sex imbalance on matching patterns in China’s
marriage markets. We hypothesize that the economic inequality caused by economic
liberalization, together with sex imbalance, will lead to women’s hypergamy
(marrying up). Employing CGSS data, our empirical findings support the hypothesis.
We also establish that sex imbalance enhances the postnuptial bargaining power of the
wife vis-à-vis the husband in intra-household resource allocation. The findings are
robust to IV estimation and robustness checks.