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Xiaorong Gu

their trajectories for the society at large? In this paper, drawing on pooled data from the 2012, 2013, and 2015 waves
of the China General Social Survey (CGSS), I examined two major dimensions of youths’ transition to first marriage,
namely the tempo (i.e., “when do they marry?”) and the status composition between couples (i.e., “who marry who?”).
By contextualizing the marriage transition patterns of different birth and marriage cohorts in China’s broad social,
institutional, and economic changes, I analytically unpacked the heterogeneity of marriage contracted over four decades
to unfold the changes and continuities in youths’ entry to first marriage.
The reminder of this paper is structured as follows. The second section portrays the broader social context of the study,
where I focused on major historical events that could shape young people’s lives. This is followed by a literature review
section. Successive sections present the data and key findings. Finally, I concludes the paper with a discussion of social
and policy implications and suggestions for further research.
2. Research Context

I created four birth cohorts to examine the tempo of Chinese youths’ transition to first marriage, which largely corresponds
to four marriage cohorts for the analysis of marriage homogamy trends.

2.1. The Cultural Revolution cohort
Born between 1946 and 1955, this cohort experienced a considerable interruption in their life course transitions by turbulent
political and economic experiments in the Mao era. Their childhood years were characterized by political instability and
severe material deprivation in the Great Leap Forward and Great Famine. Their adolescence and early adult years were
swept by the 10-year Cultural Revolution where the national education system was nearly stalled, over 17 million urban
teenagers were sent down to rural areas for “reeducation,” and their economic life, to a great extent personal life, was
controlled by collective organizational units such as work units or communes (Bernstein, 1977). While the new marriage
law released in 1950 and progressive state propaganda exemplified in the slogan of “women holding up half of the
sky” brought progressive elements to their marriage contraction in terms of gender dynamics, the turbulent political and
economic environment disrupted the transition-to-adulthood processes for this cohort (Hung and Chiu, 2003).
2.2. The early reform cohort
The second cohort, born between 1956 and 1965, spent their childhoods at least partially during the Cultural Revolution
and came of age as the country shifted the gear toward economic liberalization. During their young adult life, the state
ideology experienced a drastic shift, from the excessive political repertoire of class struggle to the more pragmatic
depoliticization of ordinary life (Jacka, 1997. p. 40). Economic development was held as the “hard truths” (ying daoli),
and the educational system resumed its normalcy. Two family policies that could potentially affect their transition to
adulthood were promulgated, i.e., the one-child policy and the revised marriage law which lifted the minimal legal
marriage age to 20 for females and 22 for males.
2.3. The mid-reform cohort

The mid-reform cohort (1966–1975) reached adolescence and early adulthood when China fully adopted the export-
oriented economic model after Deng Xiaoping’s famous southern tour in 1992. Economic development was fast, mass
education was promoted (i.e., the promulgation of the 1986 Compulsory Education Law), and a growing private economy
attracted a small segment of skilled professionals and massive migration flows of low-skilled laborers from rural
hinterland to coastal cities. Although this period was featured with general improvement of living standards and economic
opportunities, social inequalities such as regional disparities induced by the “coastal development strategy” (Yang, 1991),
urban-rural divide induced by urban-biased developmental policies (Yang and Cai, 2000), and income inequality (Xie and
Zhou, 2014) rose rapidly. This could have tremendous implications for youths’ marriage formation patterns.

2.4. The late reform cohort
Born in greater economic prosperity since the late 1970s, the last cohort, some still in their 20s, simultaneously enjoyed
greater opportunities and faced heightened pressure in adolescence and young adulthood. Growing up in a relatively
low fertility context induced by the stringent anti-natal one-child policy, they are well provided for and with better
educational chances, given that higher education has been expanded since 1999. Statistics from the UNESCO show that,
between 1990 and 2015, youth literacy rate (aged 15–24) in China almost reached 100%, with a convergence for both the

International Journal of Population Studies | 2018, Volume 4, Issue 1 11