Does simplifying divorce and marriage registration matter? Evidence from China

This article evaluates the marital consequences of easier access to divorce and marriage by exploiting a major policy change in China that simplifies both. I first use a regression discontinuity design to examine the short-run effect and find that simplified registration immediately triggered more and faster divorces and marriages. In estimating the long-run effect, I adopt a difference-in-differences strategy that further exploits cross-sectional variation in urbanization rate. Results indicate that the positive effect on marital outcomes, especially on marriage rate, persisted in the medium run for 4 years.