Transition and Evolution in China: Cohort and Historical Dynamics in Gender And Sexual Attitudes In 2010-2015

• In Event: 4367 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 3. Gender, Marriage, and Family

Abstract

Despite overwhelming evidence of worsened gender equalities in the labor and marriage market in China, we know very little about cohort and period dynamics of gender and sexual attitudes in China, particularly in the period since 2007. We bridge this gap in our knowledge using data from the China General Social Survey from 2010-2015 (N = 45,860). We unravel the impact of birth cohort, historical times, and cohort characteristics on gender and sexual attitudes using a series of cross-classified age-period-cohort logistic regression models. There are both cohort- and period-related changes in sexual attitudes, but gender attitudes remained stagnated over time despite a liberal trend among the younger cohorts. Cohort transitions take place resulting from compositional change in individual characteristics of different cohorts. The rise of individualism in the two youngest cohorts born in the later 1970s and later, many of whom are the only children of their families, appear to be associated with more liberal gender and sexual attitudes among their members.

Authors

• Xiaoling Shu, University of California Davis

• Bowen Zhu