# Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012 > [!cite] > Jiang Quanbao, and Jesús J. Sánchez-Barricarte. ‘Bride Price in China: The Obstacle to “Bare Branches” Seeking Marriage’. *The History of the Family*, vol. 17, no. 1 (2012), pp. 2–15. [https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2011.640544](https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2011.640544). > [!abstract] > Throughout Chinese history, the country’s patrilineal family system has lead to the practice of paying for brides, a social phenomenon closely related to the issue of surplus males in China. This article attempts to analyze the fluctuations in bride prices over the last 50 years, and at the same time investigate the two vicious cycles involving ‘bare branches’ and the ways in which they find money to pay a bride price. The following points are concluded: > > 1. The prevalence of paying a bride price is closely related to China’s shortage of females. Due to the difficulty involved in finding a wife, bride prices have consistently risen since the 1980s. > > 2. Males in poor rural areas are afflicted by two vicious cycles. The first is the ‘poor—bare branch—poorer’ cycle. Specifically, poverty prevents them from finding a spouse; this effectively turns them into bare branches, after which they become even poorer. The second is the ‘inability to pay the bride price—bare branch—need to pay a higher bride price’ cycle. Unable to pay a bride price because they are poor, they are forced to postpone getting married to save enough money. After they become bare branches, they find themselves in a more disadvantaged position, and as a result must pay a higher bride price when seeking a wife. > > 3. In order to pay a bride price, many families are forced to scrimp and save for decades, to borrow money or to take out other types of loans. In extreme circumstances, they will even resort to obtaining money illegally in order to pay a bride price. --- ‘A bride price is the amount of money or goods paid by the groom or his family to the parents of a woman upon the marriage of their daughter to the groom; it reflects a cultural value. Worldwide, the payment of a bride price is widely practiced, especially in those areas where patrilineal systems and patrilocal marriage dominate. The bride price occupies a central role in marital customs, and is a reflection of unilineal descent groups (Goody, 1973; Harrell and Dickey, 1985).’ [[Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012|(Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2012, 3)]] ^0409aa ‘“Bare branches” are those men who are over a certain age but, involuntarily, have been unable to find a spouse to get married, and thus have no wife and children, like a bare branch without leaves (Jiang and Li, 2009).’ [[Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012|(Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2012, 4)]] ^b40eac ‘A bride price is classified into a formal part and an informal part. The formal bride price refers to the part given during the formal engagement ceremony. Generally, the form of this bride price is unified and fixed, but varies from region to region. The amount of the formal portion is larger, including money and goods given to the bride by the groom, and symbolizes the establishment of formal engagement. The informal bride price is in addition to the formal bride price, and is given voluntarily by the groom’s family or by the groom himself during the engagement procedure, sometimes just before or after the formal engagement ceremony (He, 2006).’ [[Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012|(Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2012, 6)]] ^736db7 ‘At present, bride prices in China include money and goods (Yan, 2005).’ [[Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012|(Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2012, 4)]] ^693f00 ‘In order to pay a bride price, many families are forced to scrimp and save for decades, to borrow money or to take out other types of loans. In extreme circumstances, they will even resort to obtaining money illegally in order to pay a bride price.’ [[Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012|(Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2012, 2)]] ^3eb66d ‘If a man can not pay a high enough bride price, and has no other resource to be used for exchange, he has to lower his requirement for his future spouse. Many bare branches, at the bottom of social hierarchy and at a severe disadvantage, have no preference for their spouse. They either remain single or lower their standard to marry women with disabilities, either physical or mental (Chen, 2004). According to a bare branch’s mother, so long as the bride is a woman, no matter if she is crippled, blind, lame, and is willing to live with his son, the mother will take her with no requirement (Mo, 2005).’ [[Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012|(Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2012, 15)]] ^276857 ‘Bare branches, as we have seen, belong to the bottom rung of the social hierarchy. They have little or no education, and they have no women to take care of them. They are depressed, discriminated against by others, and their economic conditions are poor. As a result, bare branches generally have no goals to pursue. They spend their earnings smoking, drinking, and gambling, even on prostitutes and illegal drugs. Without families of their own to take care of, they have no responsibilities and no motivation to earn more money, which effectively translates into a waste of human resources, and harms productivity (Yu, 2007).’ [[Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012|(Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2012, 11)]] ^9489f4 ‘Even if \[bare branches] reluctantly take part in production, their aim is merely to earn their daily bread. Being unable to marry acts as a disincentive to working harder; furthermore, they have no motivation to accumulate wealth, and this in turn impoverishes them (Zhu, 2008).’ [[Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012|(Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2012, 11)]] ^e52ba0 ‘Generally speaking, bare branches lack life goals and motivations; they have no plan to regulate their consumption. A survey conducted in Henan, Hebei, Shaanxi and Jilin provinces shows, since bare branches have no family and no children, they have no pressure and no responsibility. Moreover, they do not take part in farming, and in many cases will eventually sell the land and idle away the day by drinking or fishing (Mo, 2005).’ [[Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012|(Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2012, 11)]] ^f811cd ‘Another investigation on bare branches and their social economic effect carried out in 2007 in Henan province, also found bare branches to have no life goals. Since they do not have a complete home, they do not have the motivation and energy to do other work besides farming. As for their parents, they think that bare branches do not need to make any contribution to the family. Although themselves are poor, they have to support their bare branch sons as well. In this way, bare branches have already become a burden to the family (Luo, 2008).’ [[Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012|(Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2012, 11)]] ^e81bf6 ‘A preference for sons and discrimination against daughters has long existed in China, which has resulted in an imbalance in the population’s sex structure: in other words, a surplus of males. In the 1982 census, China’s sex ratio at birth was 108.5, rising to 111.3 in the 1990 census, and worsening to 116.9 in the 2000 census. Though some optimistic studies indicate that the sex ratio at birth in China has begun to decline(Das Gupta et al., 2009; Guilmoto, 2009), the 2010 census shows a sex ratio at birth of 118.6, an increase compared with the 116.9 from the 2000 census. When imbalanced cohorts enter the marriage market, especially after the year 2010, Chinese males will continue to undergo a severe marriage squeeze that will last for decades; by the year 2020, 12% to 15% of young adult males will be bare branches (Jiang et al., 2007).’ [[Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, ‘Bride Price in China’, 2012|(Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte 2012, 4)]] ^670803