Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/128583 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
ADB Economics Working Paper Series No. 465
Publisher: 
Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila
Abstract: 
This short essay surveys recent literature on the competitive saving motive and its broader economic implications. The competitive saving motive is defined as saving to improve one's status relative to other competitors for dating and marriage partners. Here are some of the key results of the recent literature: (i) cross-country evidence show that greater gender 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 the local sex ratio; (iii) rising sex ratios contribute nearly half of the rise in housing prices in the People's Republic of China; and (iv) families with sons in regions of greater sex ratios are more likely to become entrepreneurs and take risky jobs to earn more income.
Subjects: 
competition
current account
saving
sex ratio
JEL: 
D1
E2
F3
I1
J1
J2
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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