Educational and age assortative mating in China: The importance of marriage order

Trends in Educational Assortative Marriage in China Over the Past Century

In the past century, China has undergone rapid and dramatic social and economic changes. This article describes trends in educational assortative marriages of cohorts born in 1906-1995 in China. We measure educational attainment relatively as an individual's percentile position in the education distribution of a 10-year birth cohort and study trends using comparable, easy-to-interpret couple rank-rank correlations. We analyze microdata samples from the 1982, 1990, 2000, and 2010 China censuses and the 2015 1% intercensus survey and nationally representative surveys between 1996 and 2018. We find a large and steady increase in educational assortative marriage over the past century, except among those born in 1946-1965, whose schooling and marriage were impacted by the Cultural Revolution. Our study highlights the critical roles of social, political, and economic contexts in shaping trends in educational assortative marriage.

Revisiting Horizontal Stratification in Higher Education: College Prestige Hierarchy and Educational Assortative Mating in China

Existing research on assortative mating has examined marriage between people with different levels of education, yet heterogeneity in educational assortative mating outcomes of college graduates has been mostly ignored. Using data from the 2010 Chinese Family Panel Study and log-multiplicative models, this study examines the changing structure and association of husbands' and wives' educational attainment between 1980 and 2010, a period in which Chinese higher education experienced rapid expansion and stratification. Results show that the graduates of first-tier institutions are less likely than graduates of lower-ranked colleges to marry someone without a college degree. Moreover, from 1980 to 2010, female first-tier-college graduates were increasingly more likely to marry people who graduated from similarly prestigious colleges, although there is insufficient evidence to draw the same conclusion about their male counterparts. This study thus demonstrates the extent of heterogeneity in educational assortative mating patterns among college graduates and the tendency for elite college graduates to marry within the educational elite.

The Association between Widowhood and Cognitive Function among Chinese Elderly People: Do Gender and Widowhood Duration Make a Difference?

Few studies have examined the effects of widowhood on cognitive function in Chinese elderly individuals. We conducted a longitudinal study to assess the association between widowhood and cognitive function and further explored gender differences in this association and the impact of widowhood duration. The analytical sample consisted of 5872 Chinese elderly people who participated in the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) and were followed up from 2005 to 2014. We used the Chinese version of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) to assess cognitive function. Widowhood duration was calculated from the self-reported year at which the spouse passed away. Multilevel growth models were employed to estimate the association between widowhood and cognitive function while adjusting for many demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Widowhood status was associated with cognitive decline among Chinese elderly individuals after adjusting for covariates (B = −0.440, 95% CI −0.727 to −0.152), and this association was only statistically significant among men (B = −0.722, 95% CI −1.104 to −0.339). Being widowed for 5 years or less (B = −0.606, 95% CI −1.112 to −0.100), 16–20 years (B = −0.937, 95% CI −1.685 to −0.190), and 21+ years (B = −1.401, 95% CI −1.967 to −0.834) predicted worse cognitive function in men, while being widowed for more than 21+ years (B = −0.655, 95% CI −1.186 to −0.124) was associated with cognitive decline in women. More attention should be directed towards widowed men and long-term widowed elderly individuals.

The Emergence of Educational Hypogamy in India

With rising education among women across the world, educational hypergamy (women marrying men with higher education) has decreased over the last few decades in both developed and developing countries. Although a decrease in hypergamy is often accompanied by increasing homogamy (women marrying men with equal levels of education), our analyses for India based on a nationally representative survey of India (the India Human Development Survey), document a considerable rise in hypogamy (women marrying partners with lower education) during the past four decades. Log-linear analyses further reveal that declining hypergamy is largely generated by the rise in education levels, whereas hypogamous marriages continue to increase even after marginal distributions are taken into account. Further multivariate analyses show that highly educated women tend to marry men with lower education but from more privileged families. Moreover, consanguineous marriages, which exemplify strong cultural constraints on spousal selection in certain parts of India, are more likely to be hypogamous than marriages not related by blood. We argue that the rise in hypogamous marriage by education paradoxically reflects deep-rooted gender scripts in India given that other salient social boundaries are much more difficult to cross.