Family Background, Individual Characteristics, and the Subjective Probability of Marriage

• In Event: Marriage Strategies in East Asia

Abstract

Using data from the 2011 wave of the Taiwan Youth Project, we examine the relative influences of family background and individual characteristics on the respondent’s subjective probability of marriage by age 30. The Taiwan Youth Project is a panel survey that interviews either annually or biennially a representative sample of middle school students in 2000.
Family background includes parent’s education, occupational status, the religion in which the respondent was raised, respondent’s family structure and household income in adolescence, and parent’s attitudes. Individual characteristics include the respondent’s own education, wage, her/his attitudes toward intimate relationship, and her/his relationship history. We first provide a rationale for the study of subjective probability of marriage, arguing that this measure captures the expectations of cultural norms and how consideration related to marriage formation shapes the interrelated life decisions. We begin with an assessment of the extent to which subjective probability predicts actual marriage timing/behavior by exploiting the panel feature of data. We then explore how the subjective probability of marriage varies by the family background and individual characteristics of the respondent. We argue that the subjective probability of marriage should not predict actual marriage timing, net of current relationship status, if marriage is only the result of romantic pursuit dominated by haphazard and unpredictable factors. We further argue that, while individual characteristics are important predictors, family background will still influence the subjective probability of marriage if individuals take into account the traditional roles of family they are expected to play while making their marriage decisions.

Author

• Jui-Cheng Allen Li, New York University