the economics of chinese daughters

a recent new york times article, dead bachelors in remote china still find wives: "To ensure a dead son's contentment in the afterlife, some Chinese parents search out a dead woman to be his bride."

the article describes the custom of "minghun" or afterlife marriage. parents have spent the equivalent of $1200 to provide an unmarried, but very dead, son an unmarried female corpse to ensure a complete and fulfilled afterlife.

economics enters this paragraph:

"Mr. Chen said his own marriage, at 35, was a lucky stroke, coming after he lobbied the family of a younger woman in another village. It allowed him to have three children and carry on his family name. But he said the pool of available brides was limited, a scarcity that increased their value — an irony, given that some rural families, conscious of China’s one-child policy, abort female fetuses before birth or abandon newborn girls."

essentially, by limiting the number of children that couples may legally have, the chinese government places a ceiling on reproduction, which results in an inelastic supply curve at Q2. as this is below the equilibrium point of a common supply-demand curve, the price (i.e. value) of a culturally worthless daughter increases (represented by P2). moreover, a deadweight lost in incurred, which is represented by the shaded region ABC.





i'll anticipate some of your questions with the following answers:

1) yes, i actually read the news
2) yes, i actually took thirty seconds to sketch out a graph
3) yes, i actually took the time to draw said graph on my computer
4) yes, i actually posted it
5) yes, i'm a dork with little knowledge of econ (so if i'm wrong, please correct me)

source: dead bachelors in remote china still find wives