Title: The Price of Love: Inflation and Marriage

Speaker: Fang Ming, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Jinan University, PhD from University of Maryland (2023). His research covers labor economics, household economics with a focus on marriage markets, education and labor market interactions, as well as development and political economy, with publications in journals such as Journal of Comparative Economics.

Abstract: Do macroeconomic price shocks shape family formation? This paper examines how inflation affects marriage formation in the United States, utilizing state-level price variations and microdata from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). By decomposing inflation into tradable and non-tradable components, we show that price shocks have sharply different effects on marriage decisions. Since 2007, higher tradable inflation leads to higher marriage probabilities for women aged 18–30 and men aged 31–50, with effects concentrated among college-educated. Additional evidence points to important labor market mechanisms. We find no evidence that inflation-induced marriages are of lower matching quality. These results underscore that sectoral exposure in labor markets can play an important role in transmitting macroeconomic shocks to household formation.

Date & time: 26 June 2026, 11:00 - 13:00

Venue: B336, Block B, Zhixin Building, Central Campus, SDU