Between 'Hukou' and 'I Do': How the 2014 Hukou Reform Reshapes China's Marriage Market

In this paper, I study how the 2014 relaxation of China's household registration (Hukou) restrictions reshaped the marriage market for internal migrants. The reform significantly eased the requirements for obtaining local Hukou in non-megacities, while megacities re- tained strict controls. Exploiting this institutional change, I use a difference-in-differences framework to compare marriage outcomes between treatment cities (cities with population below 5 million) and control cities (cities with population above 5 million). I find that, after the reform, migrants in treatment cities became less likely to marry local Hukou holders, and the educational gap between spouses narrowed. These results suggest that the value of Hukou status as a marriage-matching advantage declined when local registration became easier to obtain. As a result, individuals placed more emphasis on non-institutional traits, such as education, when selecting partners.