SDU

I had never heard of this organization before:

In 1983, [he] sparked the 'Great Marriage Debate' when he encouraged ... men to choose highly-educated women as wives. He was concerned that a large number of graduate women were unmarried. Some sections of the population, including graduate women, were upset by his views. Nevertheless, a match-making agency Social Development Unit (SDU) was set up to promote socialising among men and women graduates.

Before clicking the link above, try to guess the country where this took place (and, for bonus points, the name of the politician behind this unusual agency).

I wonder if there are any economics papers studying the SDU.  One could imagine a simple "differences-in-differences" (DD) research design looking at match-making outcomes before and after the SDU was set up (comparing across highly-educated women and non-highly-educated women).  Of course, the marriage markets aren't completely segregated by skill, so there are probably spillover effects onto the non-highly-educated women, invalidating the simple DD.  I guess you'd have to estimate a structural matching model a la Ariely, Hitsch and Hortacsu (AER 2010).

Comments

[Nurkholisoh Aman]

Singapore, and none other than MM LKY :)