Page 16 - IJPS-4-1

International Journal of Population Studies

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Four decades of transition to first

marriage in China: Economic reform

and persisting marriage norms

Xiaorong Gu
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore

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
ARTICLE INFO Ф 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
Received: September 30, 2017
Accepted: November 19, 2017 China have failed to weaken persisting marriage norms and practices among young people,
Published: November 26, 2017 contrary to well-documented empirical evidence from many other national contexts. I ruminate
on potential institutional and cultural mechanisms underlying such an intriguing phenomenon.
*CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Keywords: China; economic reform; marriage timing; homogamy; transition to
Xiaorong Gu
Asia Research Institute, National adulthood; norm
University of Singapore,
Singapore. 1. Introduction
arigx@nus.edu.sg
The tension has never been higher in Chinese youths’ transition to marriage since the
CITATION economic reform initiated in the late 1970s, due to entanglement of and contradictions
Gu X (2018). Four decades of in modernization of individual pursuits, dramatic social changes, shifting state policies
transition to first marriage in and remaining Confucian familist traditions. First, rapid urbanization and industrialization
China: Economic reform and have restructured the economic profile of the population, where individuals spend longer
persisting marriage norms. years on skills training or formal education before entering the labor market. A notable
International Journal of trend is women’s increasing educational attainment and formal employment in the context
Population Studies, 4(1):10-24.
doi: 10.18063/ijps.v4i1.669 of educational expansion (Treiman, 2013; Yeung, 2013), which exerts a considerable
shock to the Confucian patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal family ideal. Second, with
Copyright: © 2018 Xiaorong Gu. the state’s retreat from welfare provision for a large segment of the population, the social
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms function of the family in childcare, elderly care, and other pragmatic areas has been
of the Creative Commons strengthened, hence the revival of traditional gender discourses and family values (Jacka,
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 1997. p. 42). Third, despite sporadic evidence showing growth in divorce rate (Wang
International License (http:// and Zhou, 2010) and higher personal autonomy in marriage decisions as stipulated by
creativecommons.org/licenses/ successive marriage laws (Davis, 2014), liberalization of social attitudes toward sexuality
by-nc/4.0/), permitting all in “a sex revolution” (Pan, 1994), near universal, and early marriage still holds as the
noncommercial use, distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, norm in the Chinese society (Ji and Yeung, 2014).
provided the original work is How do young adults in China navigate their transition to marriage among interweaving
properly cited. social, structural, and cultural forces as described above? What are the implications of

10 International Journal of Population Studies | 2018, Volume 4, Issue 1