Marriage Strategies in East Asia

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Marriage is a site for emotional satisfaction and mutual support. Simultaneously marriage may be a location for exchange of resources between husbands and wives and between two families. The debate over “emotional” and “exchange” model of matching strategies is particularly relevant to marriage formation in East Asia, where marriage decisions have often been characterized as an “exchange” of assets between families and a highly asymmetric division of household labor. Using recent surveys on marriages in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan this panel explores how institutional and socioeconomic change may be promoting preferences that emphasize matching of individual characteristics of couples over exchange of either individual or family assets.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Deborah Davis, Yale University

Chair

• Deborah Davis, Yale University

Individual Presentations

• Family Background, Individual Characteristics, and the Subjective Probability of Marriage - Jui-Cheng Allen Li, New York University

• Marriage Markets in East Asia - Setsuya Fukuda, National Inst.of Population and Social Security Research

• Trends in Homogamy by Education, Ethnicity, and Birth Place in China: 1940-2005 - Zheng Mu, ARI at NUS; Qing Lai, Florida International University

• Parental involvement and spousal choices in Shanghai - Felicia Tian, Fudan University

• Current Trends in Homogamy and its Consequences in Japan - Fumiya Uchikoshi, The University of Tokyo

Discussant

• Deborah Davis, Yale University