The Cultural Revolution and Marital Delay in China

This paper empirically studies the impacts of intense exposure to the Cultural Revolution on individual's marriage decisions in China：timing of first marriage and denial in marriage. Consistent evidences from multiple national census datasets indicate that the intensely affected cohorts' first marriages have been delayed by 1.2-2 years on average and more of them keep single. We also find heterogeneous effects across population in accordance with historical events. More substantial delaying effects are observed for females, urban resident, groups classified as bad social status and those who encountered multiple disruptions as well as those who primarily experienced disturbances in adolescence. These findings are robust to different identification strategies, model specifications, contemporary comparisons and various datasets