Giulia Briselli (UniTO and Collegio Carlo Alberto)

Mock Job Market Talk:

“One Bed, Two Dreams: Female Migration, Conservative Norms and Foreign Brides in South Korea”

Abstract. Low fertility and decreasing marriage rates characterize most of developed economies nowadays, as these issues are a central target for policy makers. In this paper, I study how internal migration affects a country’s marriage market. In particular, I use the setting of South Korea to analyze how female internal mobility at marriage age affects the demand for foreign brides at the municipality level. I run an empirical analysis, using a two-way fixed effect model and an enclave instrument based on past female internal migration. Overall, I find that an increase in “female flight”, measured as the ratio of outflows over inflows of local women, raises the demand for foreign brides, in particular in rural areas. I show that the gap in gender attitudes between younger generations of South Korean men and women explains the phenomenon. When I exploit the geographical variation in attitudes for the empirical analysis, results show that in areas where men share values that are more conservative in terms of family roles, an increase in “female flight” raises the arrival of foreign brides even further.