Recent Trends of Educational Assortative Mating in Urban China: A New Look at the Hukou system

• In Event: 1283 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 02. Marriage and Families in China

Abstract

Using pooled national survey data, this study investigates newly-emerging trends of educational assortative mating in urban China since 1990. The analysis goes beyond prior studies by extending the time series through 2013 and by having an innovative focus on the comparison between settled and migrant couples divided by the institution of urban/rural hukou. Results from log-linear modelling show that China’s well-documented reform-era increase in educational homogamy has stabilised in urban areas over the past two decades. Yet this overall constancy masks hukou-based heterogeneity: educational homogamy strengthened among urban-hukou settled couples but fluctuated trendlessly among rural-hukou migrant couples, so that the pronounced growth for settled couples following China’s higher educational expansion was counteracted entirely by a downward fluctuation within migrant couples. Moreover, hypergamy emerged as a new pattern of assortative mating during the given period, which is driven exclusively by marriages between rural-hukou husbands and urban-hukou wives. Respectively, these findings suggest the continued tightening up among privileged urban-hukou holders, and gendered exchange of urban hukou with more education. Jointly, they call for a distinction between hukou-based and spatial-based conceptualisations of China’s rural-urban divide.

Author

• Xuewen Yan, Cornell University