Paper short abstract:

In preindustrial agrarian societies, a girl's earnings, though pooled with kin, could gain her a nearby rather than a distant marriage. For Chinese brides, nearby marriage was less disruptive of a girl's slender social capital than a distant out-marriage.

Paper long abstract:

How was the spatial movement of Chinese brides influenced by girls' pre-marital work? That work met nearly one-quarter of many families' labor needs, engaging them in cryptic fashion in a complex preindustrial economy. That work took many forms, from textile, basket, and mat making to the collection of dispersed raw materials such as the fruit of the tong oil tree. I hypothesize that money-earning premarital work affected the spatial distribution of brides from different communities. Distance, in turn, affected the resources on which a young married woman might depend by diluting the social capital that even girls could accumulate. Nearby marriages enabled continued contact with the community a new bride knew best. I test two hypotheses on interviews with 1500 elderly Sichuan women, interviewed in 1990-91. When girls produced goods for home use only, their marital distribution should be scattered; when they produced for market, marriages were made nearer their natal homes. Girls' earning capacity helped them, to some degree, to retain the advantages of postmarital residence that was relatively near to their childhood homes, kin, and social ties.