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Cited by 988

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 31 of the 31 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The Competitive Saving Motive: Evidence from Rising Sex Ratios and Savings Rates in China

Wei, Shang-Jin, Zhang, Xiaobo·2011·Journal of Political Economy
DOI 10.1086/660887
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Abstract

The high and rising household savings rate in China is not easily reconciled with the traditional explanations that emphasize life cycle factors, the precautionary saving motive, financial development, or habit formation. This paper proposes a 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 households. Both cross-regional and household-level evidence supports this hypothesis. This factor can potentially account for about half the actual increase in the household savings rate during 1990–2007.

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Metadata

Authors
Wei, S.-J., & Zhang, X.
Venue
Journal of Political Economy
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Published
2011-06
Volume
119
Issue
3
Pages
511-564
ISSN
  • 0022-3808 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-534X
DOI
10.1086/660887
OpenAlex
W3094234085
Cited by
988
References
31
FWCI
191.06
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Competitive Saving Motive: Evidence from Rising Sex Ratios and Savings Rates in China. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/660887
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Wei, S.-J., & Zhang, X. (2011). The Competitive Saving Motive: Evidence from Rising Sex Ratios and Savings Rates in China. Journal of Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1086/660887

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.