Four decades of transition to first marriage in China: Economic reform and persisting marriage norms
Journal Title: International Journal of Population Studies - Year 2018, Vol 4, Issue 1
Abstract
This study draws on three waves (2012, 2013, and 2015) of pooled data from the China General Social Survey to examine two major dimensions of the transition to first marriage among four cohorts of youths, i.e., the transition tempos and the homogamy patterns. Key findings include: (1) There is no evidence of systematic delays in family formation among cohorts coming of age after reform, albeit moderate cross-cohort heterogeneity. Two cohorts are identified for their unique trajectories: The Cultural Revolution cohort with a relatively protracted transition process and the late reform cohort with a rather condensed marriage formation pattern, (2) respondents who belong to older cohorts, who are men, who have received higher education and hold urban hukou have lower risk in entering first marriage by a certain age, and (3) I recorded steady growing strengths of homogamy over cohorts, with the ะค parameters rising from 0.42 for the Cultural Revolution cohort to 0.56 for the late reform cohort. The overall message is that four decades of rapid economic development in post-reform China have failed to weaken persisting marriage norms and practices among young people, contrary to well-documented empirical evidence from many other national contexts. I ruminate on potential institutional and cultural mechanisms underlying such an intriguing phenomenon.
Authors and Affiliations
Xiaorong Gu
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP678839
- DOI -
- Views 140
- Downloads 0
Dietary intake knowledge and reasons for food restriction during pregnancy among pregnant women attending primary health care centers in Ile-Ife, Nigeria
The study investigated dietary intake knowledge and reasons for food restriction during pregnancy among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. This cross-sectional survey involved 530 pregnant wo...
Changes in total and disability-free life expectancy among older adults in China: Do they portend a compression of morbidity?
The purpose of this research is to determine whether disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) in China has been increasing more rapidly than total life expectancy (TLE). Such a scenario would be consistent with a compressi...
Concordance and discordance between objectively and subjectively measured successful aging and their linkages with mortality
Successful aging has extended from the biomedical-oriented model to the biomedical-and-psychosocial mixed model. However, few studies have investigated the subtypes of the joint classification between subjective (psychos...
Nonparametric graduation techniques as a common framework for the description of demographic patterns
The graduation of age-specific demographic rates is a subject of special interest in many disciplines as demography, biostatistics, actuarial practice, and social planning. For estimating the unknown age-specific probabi...
Maternal mortality and fertility in Myanmar: State of the art
Many women in developing countries are dying from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. These maternal deaths are attributed to the poor coverage of reproductive health services and high fertility level...