Gender Asymmetry in the Changing Association between Education and Divorce in China

• In Event: 4251 - Macro-micro Intersections of Gender Inequality

Abstract

The gender revolution theory posits that with increasing gender equity, women’s rising socioeconomic status stabilizes marriage instead of weakening it. However, studies in East Asia, including Japan and Korea, have observed the same pattern with little change in gender equity. This study expands the comparative research and investigate if these theoretically unexpected patterns also exist in China, and if East Asian countries are an exception to the gender revolution theory. Drawing on the Chinese Family Panel Studies (2010, 2012, 2014), this paper examines the changing association between education and divorce by three marriage cohorts in China (married before 1980, between 1980-2000, and married after 2000, N = 297,263) for both women and men. Discrete-time event history analysis with firth methods are employed to conduct the analysis. Results show significant gender asymmetry in the association between education and divorce. College educated women were the first to experience a rise in divorce between 1980-2000, and women with high school education followed the pattern since 2000. Even though men with college education were the first to divorce, men with lower education were increasingly more likely to be divorced over historical time. These results suggests a salient gender and class disparity in divorce in China, and that China does not share the same educational differentials over time with other East Asian countries. The author discusses the theoretical implications of these results on the gender revolution theory.

Author

• Jingjing Chen, University of California-Davis