Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This study examines whether information asymmetry during matchmaking affects women’s choice of spouse, taking advantage of a natural experiment in South Korea, the 2010 amendment of the Marriage Brokers Business Management Act for the married immigrant women. Information asymmetry is a serious issue in marriage through brokers in South Korea, particularly for international women who are poor and would like to get married to Korean men so that they can move to South Korea. The 2010 amendment required international marriage brokers in South Korea to provide more information about South Korean men seeking wives to women in other countries, such as Vietnam and China, during the matchmaking process. Such information includes marital history, health condition, occupation, criminal record, and other matters. We investigate whether this amendment affected the probability of married immigrant women to marry men with more desirable characteristics and the rate of women’s labor market participation after marriage in South Korea. Using the National Survey of Multicultural Families in 2015, we employ the difference-in-differences method that compares the married women with and without marriage brokers before and after the intervention year, 2010. We find that after the policy change, immigrant women were married to more educated men (high school degree or more). Also, the policy change led to fewer married immigrant women working in hard-labor jobs after marriage.