The high and rising household savings rate in China is not easily reconciled with the traditional explanations that … new competitive saving motive: As the sex ratio rises, Chinese parents with a son raise their savings in a competitive … manner in order to improve their son's relative attractiveness for marriage. The pressure on savings spills over to other …

The high and rising household savings rate in China is not easily reconciled with the traditional explanations that … new competitive saving motive: As the sex ratio rises, Chinese parents with a son raise their savings in a competitive … manner in order to improve their son's relative attractiveness for marriage. The pressure on savings spills over to other …

imbalances tend to correspond with higher savings rates; (ii) household-level evidence suggest that: (a) families with unmarried … sons in rural regions with more skewed sex ratios tend to have higher savings rates, while savings rates of families with … unmarried daughters appear uncorrelated with gender imbalances; and (b) savings rates of families in cities tend to rise with …

. Based on panel datasets from China's Sichuan province, which was struck by an earthquake in 2008, and using distance from …