structural:expansion, stylistic:tone
Wealth and inheritance issues

Throughout most of human history, marriage has been a social institution that produced children and organized inheritance of property from one generation to next. Various cultures, particularly some wealthy royals and aristocratic families, arranged marriages in part to conserve or streamline the inheritance of their wealth.

Tongyangxi, also known as Shim-pua marriage in Taiwanese – literally child or little daughter-in-law – was a tradition of arranged marriage, in which a poor family would arrange and marry a pre-adolescent daughter into a richer family as a servant. The little girl provided slave-like free labor, and also the daughter-in-law to the adoptive family's son. This sort of arranged marriage, in theory, enabled the girl to escape poverty and the wealthy family to get free labor and a daughter-in-law. Zhaozhui was a related custom by which a wealthy family that lacked an heir would arrange marriage of a boy child from another family. The boy would move in with the wealthy family, take on the surname of the new family, and marry the family's daughter. Such arranged marriages helped maintain inheritance bloodlines. Similar matrilocal arranged marriages to preserve wealth inheritance were common in Korea, Japan and other parts of the world.