Beauty and status: Matching and exchange within Chinese marriages

Status exchange in marriage refers to a marriage pattern in which one spouse compensates for his or her disadvantage in one status area relative to the other spouse with an advantage in another. Two prominent examples of marriage exchange discussed in the existing literature are race–status exchange and beauty–status exchange. Although the marriage exchange theory is well supported by early studies, in recent years, its applicability has been questioned by some scholars. Protracted debates on the topic in question were launched in two top sociological journals, the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology. This study reviews these debates and offers an in-depth theoretical investigation into the relationship between matching and exchange, and the premise of marriage exchange theory. In addition, we collect and analyze the data from the five waves of the China Family Panel Studies (2010–2018) on beauty–status exchanges and other forms of marriage exchanges in China. We found little evidence of beauty–status exchanges in Chinese marriages and even the well-assumed exchange of “woman's beauty for man's talent” lacks sound empirical support. However, there are ample evidences of exchanges among the four status factors of education, occupation, income, and family background. As indicators of socioeconomic status, these four variables are homogeneous in nature, and therefore can more easily substitute for one another. We argue that the validity of marriage exchange theory depends on the similarity or substitutability between the elements in exchange. Thus, we can neither completely accept nor reject the marriage exchange theory.