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Transition to first marriage in China

respondents were 14, urban fathers are 4 times more likely to be full-time employed, while rural fathers are 3 times likely
to be engaged full time in farming.
With regard to demographic characteristics, the mean age of respondents is about 47 and 92% of them belong to the majority
Han ethnic group. About 40% are urban-hukou holders. As mentioned earlier, there is relatively even representation of the four
birth cohorts: About 25% of each. Respondents’ regional distribution by hukou and gender reveals the intricacy relationship
between uneven regional development and urbanization: Urban-hukou holders are systematically more likely to reside in Eastern
provinces or Northeastern provinces, which are regions given policy preferences in the reform and Maoist times, respectively
(Fan, 1997; Yang, 1991). Relatively equal numbers of observations are pooled from the 2012, 2013, and 2015 surveys.

5.2. The tempo of transition to first marriage: Changes and continuities
Tables 2 and 3 and Figure 1 show the results of the pace of respondents’ transition to first marriage and relevant social
factors. As said before, this set of analysis is restricted to respondents aged 30 and above. To add a caveat, our supplementary
analysis (results available upon request) based on an alternative sample of aged 25 and above shows that including those
aged below 30 could introduce estimation bias that increases the risk of earlier marriage among the youngest cohort (born
1986–1990). This justifies the use of age 30 as a threshold in defining the sample in this article.
Based on statistics in Table 2, the average age at first marriage among the four cohorts under study remains relative
stable, which is between 23 and 25 years old, with both the Cultural Revolution cohort and the late reform cohort marrying
at slightly older ages. By age 30, <7% of respondents in each cohort remain single and there is no evidence of systematic
delays in marriage among the most recent cohort, contrary to the findings reported in Western industrialized societies
(Furstenberg, 2010). This is consistent with recent studies in the Chinese context (Yeung and Hu, 2013; Tian, 2013). If
anything, the family formation tempo of the Cultural Revolution cohort sees a notable delay. In particular, 14% of urban
males in this cohort remain unmarried by age 30, which indicates of the disruptive effect of the “sent-down” campaign on
urban youths’ life course transition (Hung and Chiu, 2003). There seems to be a gendered pattern, with higher proportions
of men (whether with rural or urban hukou) marrying later.
The Kaplan-Meier survival graph in Figure 1 displays the percentage of individuals who had not married by a specific
age across cohorts.
Generally speaking, the tempo of Chinese youths’ transition to first marriage sees no dramatic shifts, despite drastic changes
in the sociopolitical context over the four decades that the data could capture. This is shown in similar shapes of the survival lines
for each cohort and convergence of lines in the beginning and the end. In other words, a normative age range (ages 20–30, shown
by the steepness of all lines in this range) for first marriage seems to reign over the population across cohorts. A closer inspection
identifies two outstanding cohorts. Compared with others, the Cultural Revolution Cohort (shown in the red solid line) witnesses
a relatively protracted sequence, with a relatively high marriage rate (20%) by the age 20 and also a relatively high singlehood rate
(7%) by 30. In contrast, the most recent cohort (born 1976–1985) coming of age in a time of rapid economic development and
globalization, we observe a rather condensed transition pattern: A lower proportion (<1/3) is married before 22, the legal marriage
age for all Chinese citizens after 1980, but by 30, almost 95% of them have entered marriage. In other words, the temporary delay

Figure 1. Proportion of the unmarried by age and cohort

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