Information Disclosure and Marriage Quality: Evidence from Premarital Medical Exams

Abstract

Many countries vary in their regulations regarding premarital health examinations, which is a form of information disclosure. To examine how premarital health examinations affect marriage quality and children’s health, we exploit a policy shock in China that changes premarital health examinations from mandatory to voluntary. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, this policy shock significantly increases the marriage probability while decreasing positive assortative matching in health among married couples. We also find an increase in low birth weight rates after the policy shock. Our findings suggest that mandatory premarital examination is beneficial in promoting the quality of marriage and children's health.

Note:
Funding Information: We acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project ID: 72073079)
Declaration of Interests: The authors (Chengyuan Liu, Yueyuan Ma, Binzhen Wu) declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper of "Information Disclosure and Marriage Quality: Evidence from Premarital Medical Exams".

Keywords: Information disclosure; Premarital health examination; Assortative matching; Marriage quality; Children's health quality

JEL Classification: I18; D82; J12