Changing partner choice and marriage propensities by education in post-industrial Taiwan, 2000−2010

DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

VOLUME 31, ARTICLE 33, PAGES 1007

−

1042

PUBLISHED 7 NOVEMBER 2014

http://www.demographic-research.org/Volumes/Vol31/33/

DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2014.31.33

Research Article

Changing partner choice and marriage

propensities by education in post-industrial

Taiwan, 2000−2010

Yen-hsin Alice Cheng

This open-access work is published under the terms of the Creative Commons

Attribution NonCommercial License 2.0 Germany, which permits use,

reproduction & distribution in any medium for non-commercial purposes,

provided the original author(s) and source are given credit.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

1008

Social change and family in Taiwan

1009

Women’s socioeconomic status and marriage

1010

Social exchange theory and assortative mating

1012

Research design

1015

5.1

Data

1015

5.2

Measures of marriage

1016

Results

1017

6.1

Changing educational patterns of marriage

1017

6.2

Changes due to availability of eligible partners or to magnitude of

marriage attraction

1020

Potential explanations for the differential retreat from marriage

1021

The role of cohabitation in an era of marriage decline

1029

Discussion

1029

Acknowledgements

1034

References

1035

Appendices

1041

Demographic Research: Volume 31, Article 33

Research Article

http://www.demographic-research.org 1007

Changing partner choice and marriage propensities by education in

post-industrial Taiwan, 2000−2010

Yen-hsin Alice Cheng

Abstract

BACKGROUND

Very little is known about recent marriage differentials by education in times of marriage

decline and economic restructuring in East Asia.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to contribute to family research in Asia by investigating educational

variations in retreat from marriage and mate selection in Taiwan.

METHODS

This study applied Schoen's (1988) harmonic-mean two-sex marriage propensity

approach to nationwide marriage registration data to examine the changing marriage

patterns by education in Taiwan between 2000 and 2010.

RESULTS

The findings show that the drop in marriage rates is particularly drastic among the least

educated. Marriage has become more prevalent and affordable for better-educated

Taiwanese. Additionally, the proportion of educationally homogamous marriages has

increased, and the share of female-hypergamous marriages of all heterogamy also

increased from 2000 to 2010. Decomposition analyses show that these changes are

mainly due to decreased marriage propensities, not to the availability of eligible partners.

Educational and sex variations in marriage intentions, gender-role and marriage values,

and the changing economic structure and financial well-being of young adults were

investigated as potential causes.

Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. E-Mail: alicey[email protected].

Cheng: Marriage patterns by education in Taiwan

1008 http://www.demographic-research.org

CONCLUSIONS

Period marriage differentials by education have reversed from negative to positive in

post-millennium Taiwan. A continued reliance on men‟s economic resources is also

observed. Differences in gender-role values and economic well-being across social

groups are plausible reasons for these family changes.

COMMENTS

More research is needed to unravel the impact of education on men and women‟s family

formation prospects and how social inequality may be reinforced and reproduced through

matrimony in Asia.

1. Introduction

In the first half of the twentieth century, marriage patterns in Taiwan used to be “early

and universal” (Lee 1994; Thornton and Lin 1994). The institution of marriage is

essential to the lives of Taiwanese men and women. As economic transformations

reshaped the lives of people in the last century, rapid and profound demographic

transitions in family behaviors also ensued. In the latter half of the twentieth century,

marriages began to be postponed, and increasingly more individuals decided not to marry

at all. While discussions on marriage decline in East Asia have often focused on

well-educated women, emphasizing how better education and earning potential among

the younger cohorts have driven down marriage rates over the years (Jones 2005;

Retherford, Ogawa, and Matsukura 2001; Tsuya and Bumpass 2004), men and women

from lower social classes have also experienced tremendous family transitions in the

post-industrial era. Fewer of them can afford to marry, and more have experienced family

disruption due to their dwindling economic standing. Both factors are likely to lead to a

positive educational gradient in marriage behaviors. Yet empirical research in Taiwan

has not paid much attention to recent marriage differentials by education level in these

times of economic restructuring. The current study aims to contribute to family research

in East Asia by using marriage registration data to conduct an in-depth investigation of

educational variations in retreat from marriage and mate selection in Taiwan.

Decomposition analyses will also be conducted to investigate the sources of such

changes. Additional analyses will also be carried out to explore the impact brought about

by the changing economy and shifting attitudes toward marriage and sex-role values as

potential explanations for the socioeconomic differentials in marriage patterns.

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2. Social change and family in Taiwan

The transformations of Taiwan from an agriculture-based to an industrialized economy

and further to capital- and skill-intensive industries have formed the backdrop to

large-scale social changes. One vivid example is reflected in family behaviors. In the first

half of the twentieth century less than 1% of women were never married by age 50. The

level of never-married men was slightly higher, but only about 2% to 5% of men were

still single before turning 50. The proportion of ever married women by age 50 stayed at

about 99% until 1980 and then declined for more than three decades. Another phase of

accelerated marriage decline is observed after the millennium, after Taiwan became a

post-industrial society in the late 1990s. By 2010 about 10% of men and 12% of women

in their late forties have never been married, which is a substantial change from the

previous universal marriage pattern. All these changes have been accompanied by

advancement in women‟s socioeconomic status. Since the 1970s, educational expansion

has taken place along with industrialization in Taiwan. Increasingly more women have

advanced to tertiary education after finishing high school. The proportion of female

students among all college students rose from 21% in 1960 to 36% in 1970 and further to

50% in 2010 (Ministry of Education 2012). The improvement in human capital among

women has propelled a surge in labor force participation rates at prime working ages − a

tremendous increase from 56% to 84% at ages 25 to 29 and from 55% to 77% at ages 30

to 34 between 1987 and 2010 (DGBAS 1987−2010). Men and women in their twenties

are the first groups to respond to the broader social and economic changes by postponing

family formation events (Thornton and Lin 1994). In 1980 unmarried men and women

were minorities among individuals in their early thirties − only 13.5% of men and 7.7%

of women aged 30 to 34 were never married. As of 2010, over half (54.1%) of men and

more than one-third (37.2%) of women in their early thirties have not entered a marital

union (Ministry of the Interior 2011).

The phenomenon of Taiwanese young adults marrying less and later has been a

focus of public and academic discussion for years. While it is not naively assumed that

the retreat from marriage is even across social classes, the attention has largely focused

on well-educated middle-class women, and the less educated are often absent from

debates on how marriages can be promoted or saved. The fact that well-educated women

are being „too picky‟ about their ideal partners (also known as the preference for a

hypergamous marriage

) is often referenced as one of the main causes of rising

singlehood. This may seem to line up well with the Second Demographic Transition

theory, which maintains that the better educated lead the trend of forming fewer marital

The usage of hypergamy vs. hypogamy throughout this paper is based on women‟s perspective. That is, a

union between a better-educated woman and a less-educated man is considered hypogamous.

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unions and having fewer children. Nonetheless, the advent of post-industrialization and a

globalized economy in Taiwan since the late 1990s has resulted in massive outsourcing

of manufacturing factories and manual jobs to developing countries in South Asia and

China, as well as an expanding service sector that attracts ever-growing numbers of

female workers into the labor market. Heightened unemployment rates, widening income

inequality between classes, and a changing labor force structure by sex in a service-based

economy are the new social realities. As less-educated men have lost their jobs and more

women have entered the labor market than ever before, the sex gap in earning capacity

has converged substantially when compared to previous decades (DGBAS 2013). These

changes inevitably affect individual life chances such as social mobility and family

formation among the younger generations of Taiwanese men and women, who were

coming of age at the turn of the millennium. In fact, it has been documented in the

literature that demographic behaviors differ across class lines in a post-industrialized

context (Cherlin 2010; Esping-Andersen 1999; Furstenberg 2008; McLanahan 2004).

The socioeconomically disadvantaged are often the ones that experience more dramatic

changes in family behaviors, as a large proportion of them have gone through job loss and

economic instability, which make union formation an unaffordable dream

(Esping-Andersen 1999, 2009). The least-educated Taiwanese men and women are more

likely to have retreated from marriage than their better-educated counterparts as income

inequality has worsened in recent years. Furthermore, it is very likely that the better

educated are increasingly marrying each other because the high living standards to be

sustained in a modern society requires financial inputs from both partners, leading to

more educational homogamy. Yet studies focusing on socioeconomic differentials in

family behaviors during the past two decades have been very scanty. Marriage patterns in

contemporary Taiwan have crucial implications for social mobility and for the adults and

children involved in these families. Hence, it is imperative that researchers acquire a

comprehensive understanding of the shifting patterns of nuptiality along social lines in

Taiwan.

3. Women’s socioeconomic status and marriage

Recent theoretical discussions about marriage decline in the developed world have

focused on the impact of women‟s rising educational attainment and increasing earning

capacity. The main argument is that advancement in women‟s socioeconomic status

inevitably brings about changes in family behaviors, but what the outcomes should be

differs across theoretical perspectives. One perspective is based on Becker‟s economic

theory of marriage, which maintains that the advancement in socioeconomic attainment

among women will result in lower rates of marriage (Becker 1991), often termed the

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“economic independence hypothesis.” This line of argument emphasizes that the

breadwinner-housekeeper division of labor within a marital union creates “gains to

trade”, and thus marriage is a rational choice for two individuals who wish to build a joint

economic unit that maximizes productivity. It follows that the gains from marriage are

largely reduced when women gain more ground in higher education and the labor market

and become less dependent on their spouses‟ income. In turn, the opportunity costs of

marriage increase, so that gainfully employed women tend to have a lower incentive to

establish a family, and less time for childrearing and domestic work.

Another perspective, proposed by Oppenheimer, stresses the important

contribution of women‟s earnings in contemporary families (Oppenheimer 1997). While

in traditional families men are normally the sole breadwinners providing economic

resources, Oppenheimer maintains that gender specialization can be a risky strategy for a

family coping with economic uncertainty and financial shock. By contrast, when both

partners contribute independently to a joint pool of earnings, a form of economic

interdependency arises out of economies of scale. In modern societies where consumer

prices have increased much faster than wage levels, dual-earner families certainly enjoy

economic advantages over single-earner families in securing a better standard of living.

In turn, the fact that women are better educated and are becoming economically

independent should make them more attractive marriage partners, and should raise their

likelihood of marriage.

Considerable empirical evidence over the past decades has proven Oppenheimer‟s

theory to be more satisfactory in explaining the reality that college-educated women,

though marrying later, are in fact more likely to enter a marital union than their

less-educated peers in several developed societies (Goldstein and Kenney 2001; Heard

2011; Ono 2003; Qian and Preston 1993; Santow and Bracher 1994; Schoen and Cheng

2006; Schwartz and Mare 2005; Sweeney 2002). For instance, using the 1995 Current

Population Survey, Goldstein and Kenney (2001) show that for women born in the 1950s

and 1960s, college graduates were more likely to marry than their less-educated

counterparts, even though they tended to enter marriage later. The importance of

women‟s economic prospects in marriage formation is also reported in Sweeney‟s (2002)

study. In Sweden women with higher income are also reported to have a higher likelihood

of entering first marriages (Ono 2003). On the other side of the globe, unions (i.e.,

marriage and cohabitation combined) in New Zealand and Australia became more

prevalent among socioeconomically advantaged men and women in the period between

1996 and 2006. This expanding union gap between social groups is due to a slight

increase in union formation among the more advantaged (i.e., better educated and with

higher income) and a stronger drop in proportions currently in a union among the more

disadvantaged (Heard 2011). Conversely, empirical research in other societies has

reported different socioeconomic patterns of marriage. Better-educated men and women

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in the Netherlands who were born in the cohorts of the 1920s to 1960s were more likely

to remain single than their less-educated peers (Dykstra and Poortman 2010). A similar

negative association between education and the chance of marriage is also found in

several Eastern and Southern European countries (Kalmijn 2013).

In Asia, research on the social gradient of marriage has been scanty. The few

existing studies on Japan show that well-educated Japanese women are less likely to enter

a marriage than their less-educated counterparts (Raymo 2003; Raymo and Iwasawa

2005). While the findings support the economic independence hypothesis, the authors put

forward a “marriage market mismatch hypothesis” to offer a context-specific explanation

for this phenomenon. Raymo and Iwasawa (2005) found that a substantial decline in

marriage among college-educated Japanese women is due to a shift in marriage market

composition (i.e., fewer suitable educated partners). It underscores women‟s continued

economic reliance on men in a social context where heightened housing and living costs

are challenging for young couples, and there are still obstacles to gender equality and

balancing work and family. Another relevant study on marriage in post-reform-era China

shows that while more education is associated with earlier entry into marriage in places

where housing prices are high, better-educated people marry later in places with low

housing prices (Yu and Xie 2013).

4. Social exchange theory and assortative mating

Alongside the theoretical debates about the influence of women‟s socioeconomic

attainment on marriage patterns, how individuals select their future partners is key to who

marries whom. In both Becker‟s and Oppenheimer‟s arguments an exchange of

characteristics between partners forms the basis of a marriage. Whether it is a

breadwinner looking for a homemaker to establish a family, or two breadwinners who

wish to reap economies of scale for a modern standard of living, rewards from marriage

are expected through matching and exchanging valuable traits and resources between the

two parties.

The exchange theory of marriage has been adopted to understand both homogamy

and heterogamy. While marriage choice is often characterized by homogamy, where

individuals with equivalent resources form unions to double the total utility, departures

from it can be conceptualized as maximizing utility through exchange of different

desirable assets. The classic example for the latter pattern is the class-caste exchange

between well-educated black men and white women as the most common type of

black-white intermarriage in the U.S. (Davis 1941; Merton 1941). A later study by

Schoen and Wooldredge (1989) found exchanges between men‟s higher education and

women‟s younger age. On the one hand, it follows that as women‟s socioeconomic status

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improves, well-educated women may be less confined to marrying the typical

breadwinner male partners, who tend to be older and better educated than themselves,

and instead have a wider range of choice of potential partners. In turn, a trend toward

educational hypogamy may become more prevalent as women move up the social ladder.

On the other hand, it is also possible that high living costs in modern societies not only

make women‟s earnings valuable in a marriage but also cause a continued reliance on

men‟s economic resources as a key criterion for establishing a family, and thus

hypergamy still prevails.

Prior research in the U.S. has reported evidence of increasing resemblance of

spouses in terms of educational attainment from 1930 to 1980 (Mare 1991). More

recently, Schwartz and Mare (2005) showed a continued rise in educational homogamy

from 1960 to 2003. College graduates in particular are becoming more likely to marry a

partner with similar education than to marry someone with lower education, and the least

educated have become much less likely to marry up (Schwartz and Mare 2005). A

comparative study of 65 nations indicated that lower levels of educational homogamy are

usually observed in times of low and high economic development − an inverted U-shaped

pattern. In particular, Confucianism tends to be associated with higher levels of

educational homogamy than Protestant culture (Smits, Ultee, and Lammers 1998).

In Asia, a recent study on South Korea shows that educational homogamy has

increased for marriage cohorts from the 1960s and later. Despite women‟s rapidly rising

educational profile, hypergamous marriages still dominate heterogamous unions (Park

and Smits 2005). Across East Asia, Smits and Park (2009) showed that in ten countries

the trend of educational assortative mating declines with increasing modernization.

Educational homogamy is lower in countries with stronger Confucian influence and for

women in cohorts with higher employment rates (Smits and Park 2009). To sum up,

marriage behaviors are shaped not only by an individual‟s social status, partner

availability, and gender relations but also by the broader economic context of a society.

In Taiwan, several studies in the 1990s attempted to unravel the assortative mating

patterns by education (Tsai 1994, 1996; Tsay 1996; Yang, Li, and Chen 2006). The

findings from two cross-sectional national surveys show that educational assortative

mating in the form of educational homogamy had been strong and stable between 1980

and 1992 (Tsai 1996). Among heterogamous marriages, hypergamy (i.e., women

marrying up) is the most common form of marriage circa 1990 (Tsai 1994). A later study

that analyzed cross-sectional national surveys in 1990 and 2000 indicates that

educational hypergamy decreased and both homogamy and hypogamy increased over the

study period (Yang, Li, and Chen 2006). A more recent study indicates that female

hypergamous marriages have declined between the pre-1970 and 1990s marriage

cohorts, and in Taiwan barriers to marrying individuals in other educational groups have

also declined (Chu and Yu 2010). All these studies on Taiwan use log-linear models to

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investigate marriage patterns revealed in survey data, but none of them directly tackle the

question of whether the education-marriage nexus is positive or negative for women.

Furthermore, more recent research has not investigated the implications of

post-millennium social change and economic restructuring.

It is likely that the negative educational gradients found in Japan also describe the

marriage differentials in Taiwan, and that hypergamy is still a more prevalent form of

heterogamy, as in South Korea, given that these societies share many similar social

circumstances and cultural values. However, post-industrialization has also caused job

loss among the least educated men, and in Taiwan more women are entering into the

service sector. This has led to less-educated men occupying a relatively disadvantaged

position in the marriage market. Thus, whether more education among women is

associated with more marriages and whether there has been a rise and fall of educational

hypergamy in contemporary Taiwan remain open questions. Hence, this study will test

two sets of competing research hypotheses:

H1a: More education is associated with more marriages for well-educated

women

H1b: More education is associated with fewer marriages for well-educated

women

H2a: With women‟s improved socioeconomic status, the proportion of

educational hypogamous marriages of all heterogamy is hypothesized to

increase

H2b: With a continued dependence on men‟s economic resources, educational

hypergamy is hypothesized to still dominate heterogamous unions.

Applying Schoen‟s (1988) harmonic-mean two-sex marriage propensity approach

to analyze detailed nationwide marriage registration data for 2000‒2010 by age and

education, this study will examine three research questions:

(1) How have marriage behaviors and partner choice varied across educational

groups in Taiwan since the millennium?

(2) Are these changes due to changes in eligible partners or marriage propensities?

(3) What are the potential causes of the educational differentials in marriage

behaviors observed in post-millennium Taiwan?

The sections below seek to explore these issues with period data.

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5. Research design

5.1 Data

To investigate the changing educational patterns of marriage, a set of detailed nationwide

marriage-match data by grooms‟ and brides‟ age and education for marriages was

requested from the Department of Household Registration in Taiwan. These age- and

education-specific marriage-match data are only available for the years after 1998. This

study uses data from the years 2000 and 2010. Among a population of 23 million there

were about 183,000 and 133,000 marriages formed in Taiwan in 2000 and 2010,

respectively. A total of 841 (29x29) cells of marriage-match data (23 age categories for

brides and grooms from age -18, 18,…, 34, 35−39, 40−44, 45−50, 50−54, 55−60, 60−64,

65+) presented in cross-tabulation format were provided. These marriage counts include

marriages of all orders

and are used as the numerators for calculating age-specific

marriage rates for both men and women. The education of brides and grooms is

categorized into four groups: less than high school, high school, junior college, and

college and above. Individuals who did not finish an educational level are grouped in the

next lower category. There are 16 spreadsheets (4 education categories for both brides

and grooms yield a total of 16 education combinations) with these 29x29 marriage-match

data for both years 2000 and 2010. About 2.2% of all marriages involved one man or

woman aged 65+ in 2000, and this was 1.55% in 2010.

As for the denominators, the exposure marriageable population data for the analyses

of marriage patterns by age and education after 2000 were calculated using the 2000 and

2010 Census data. Since the numerators are marriages of all orders, the exposure

populations are individuals who are single, divorced, and widowed in the census data.

Twenty-nine age categories (i.e., one-year age intervals from 18 to 39, 5-year age

intervals from 40−44 to 60−64, and two open intervals for ages younger than 18 and ages

65 and older) were used for the calculations of age-specific marriage rates and marriage

propensities.

The proportions of remarriages are quite low (about 10% of all marriages) for men and women under age 45

who married in 2000 and 2010. In general, most remarriages are observed among older adults above age 45, and

marriages formed above age 45 are only about 4% of all married women and 8% of all married men. Thus,

ignoring marriage orders in this study should not distort the main findings substantially.

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5.2 Measures of marriage

In this study marriage behaviors are described by using the harmonic-mean two-sex

marriage propensity approach proposed by Schoen (1988). This approach has been

applied to several studies on marriage patterns (Okun 2001; Qian 1998; Qian and Preston

1993; Raymo and Iwasawa 2005; Schoen and Cheng 2006; Schoen and Wooldredge

1989). The merit of this method is that it can simultaneously consider the joint

availability of unmarried men and women of specific traits, e.g., age and education, to

facilitate comparison of marriage behaviors between groups that are free of

compositional distortion. As a marriage often involves individuals of a different age and

educational level, it is necessary to take into account the unmarried populations that are

exposed to a specific type of marriage match. This is particularly important as the

unmarried population of a certain educational level can vary greatly across years, due to

the rapid educational expansion that has taken place in many modern societies. This type

of two-sex problem is treated with procedures that make use of age-specific

occurrence-exposure marriage rates for both men and women to measure the „force of

attraction‟ for marriage (Schoen 1988). Force of attraction is defined as a specific

marriage rate calculated from the harmonic mean of single men and women for a certain

type of age or education match. It shows the rate of encounters between men and women

of certain traits, and the share of such encounters that leads to marriage.

Occurrence-exposure rates are calculated by dividing the number of marriages

between grooms and brides of specific traits by the population at risk of such a match.

First, let M

(x,a) be the marriage rate for men between age x and x+a, such that

(x,a) = C (x,a) / P

(x,a) (1)

where C(x,a) represents the number of marriages involving men in age x to x+a and P

(x,a) is the unmarried male exposure population (i.e., never married, divorced, and

widowed) in age x to x+a. Analogously for women, let M

(y,b) be the marriage rate for

women between age y and y+b. It follows that

(y,b) = C (y,b) / P

(y,b) (2)

where P

(y,b) is the unmarried female exposure population in age y to y+b. Marriage

propensity between men with trait set A (e.g., 29-year-old college graduate) and women

with another trait set B (e.g., 31-year-old junior college graduate) can therefore be

represented by U (A;B) and is calculated as

U (A;B) = aM

(A;B) + bM

(A;B) (3)

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Both a and b in Eq. 3 are the widths of the male and female age intervals

respectively. M

(A;B) is the male marriage rate for marriages between men with trait set

A and women with trait set B, while M

(A;B) is the comparable female marriage rate.

Hence, marriage propensity U (A;B) is the sum of occurrence-exposure trait-specific

marriage intensities that show the magnitude of marriage attraction between single men

and single women of certain age and educational characteristics, independent of the

population composition. The total propensity of a certain education match is the sum of

propensities across all age matches within that specific type of education match. An age

interval length of five was assigned to the oldest open age categories when using Eq. 3 to

calculate marriage propensities.

This study further explores two additional marriage scenarios in 2010 by holding the

force of attraction constant at the 2000 level and by holding the structure of eligible

partners constant at the composition observed in 2000. These two sets of analyses

facilitate the investigation of changes in marriage behaviors that are due to different

structures of eligible partners and to changing magnitudes of marriage attraction across

groups over the one-decade period.

6. Results

6.1 Changing educational patterns of marriage

As marriage rates plummeted in the first decade after the millennium, the total marriage

propensity was slashed almost in half, from 23.14 in 2000 to 12.36 in 2010 (shown in

Table 1). The marginal sums of the top two panels of Table 1 also show that the least

educated were hit the hardest during an era of dramatic marriage decline. The changes in

total marriage propensities (refer to bottom panel of Table 1) of men and women without

a high school degree were -71.3% and -62.5%, respectively, across this ten-year period.

These are much higher than the comparable figures of -14% and -0.2% for unions

involving a man or a woman with a college degree. In addition, the total marriage

propensities for men without a high school degree versus those with a college degree

were 7.73 and 4.72 in 2000 and the comparable figures were 2.22 and 4.06 in 2010. For

women, the comparable propensities were 8.49 and 3.44 in 2000 and 3.18 and 3.44 in

2010. The association between education and the propensity to marry has shifted from

negative to positive for both men and women, although the educational discrepancy is

less strong for women. A closer look at Table 1 shows that a 17.6% increase in overall

marriage propensity is observed for marriages formed between a college-educated bride

and an equally educated groom from 2000 to 2010. An even higher increase of 33.4% is

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also found for marriages between a college-educated bride and a junior-college-educated

groom from 2000 to 2010. The comparable percentage change for marriages between

junior-college-educated brides and college-educated grooms only shows a -8.6%

decrease in the same period. Unions formed between men and women of other

educational combinations show a much stronger decline over this decade.

Table 1: Marriage propensities and percentage changes by education in years

2000 and 2010

Year 2000

Men

Women

<HS

Junior College

College+

Total

<HS

3.88

2.45

1.30

0.86

8.49

2.14

2.03

1.44

1.01

6.62

Junior College

1.18

1.07

1.34

0.99

4.59

College+

0.53

0.51

0.55

1.86

3.44

Total

7.73

6.07

4.62

4.72

23.14

Year 2010

Men

Women

<HS

Junior College

College+

Total

<HS

1.24

1.15

0.46

0.33

3.18

0.64

1.08

0.77

0.64

3.13

Junior College

0.22

0.67

0.81

0.91

2.61

College+

0.12

0.40

0.73

2.18

3.44

Total

2.22

3.29

2.78

4.06

12.36

% change between 2000 and 2010

Men

Women

<HS

Junior College

College+

Total

<HS

-68.0%

-53.4%

-64.4%

-61.4%

-62.5%

-70.0%

-46.8%

-46.1%

-37.1%

-52.6%

Junior College

-81.6%

-37.7%

-39.3%

-8.6%

-43.2%

College+

-77.0%

-21.4%

33.4%

17.6%

-0.2%

Total

-71.3%

-45.7%

-39.8%

-14.0%

-46.6%

Further analyses reveal that despite a three-fold increase in the numbers of

college-educated men and women at all ages (e.g., from 290,000 women in 2000 to

960,000 women in 2010), the growth in number of marriages formed by the best educated

across this ten-year period is also tremendous when compared to the loss of marriages

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observed among the less educated (refer to Appendix 1). The rise and fall of marriage

propensities by education are mainly driven by delayed and increased union formation

among the better educated. As can be seen in the panels for both men and women in

Appendix 2, gains in marriage propensities (i.e., differences between 2000 and 2010

observed marriage propensities by education) for the better educated (i.e., particularly

m4-f4 and m3-f4 pairings) in 2010 are clustered in unions formed in the thirties and early

forties. The picture for all the other types of educational match is consistent across all

ages for both sexes in this one-decade period: a uniform shying away from matrimony.

One point to be noted is that even though the mean level of education in Taiwan has

improved over the years for both sexes, in 2010 about 19% of men and 17% of women

aged 20 to 49 did not have a high school degree. High school was the highest completed

degree for about 39% of men and women in the same age range. Therefore, the group that

experienced a substantial decline in marriage is a non-negligible proportion of the entire

population.

As for partner choice, the proportion of educationally homogamous marriages (i.e.,

sum of the diagonal cells divided by the total marriage propensity of a given year)

increased from 39% in 2000 to 43% in 2010, even though the propensities of most types

of educational homogamy declined over this decade (refer to Table 1). That is, in an era

of marriage decline a larger share of men and women are marrying partners with

educational attainment similar to their own. For the educationally homogamous

marriages in the diagonal cells, in 2000 marriage propensities were stronger among the

least educated than the most educated men and women (3.88 vs. 1.86). Yet this pattern

reversed in 2010, as the most educated couples have much higher marriage propensities

than the least educated (2.18 vs. 1.24). On the other hand, ratios of the sum of the upper

right off-diagonal cells (i.e., the educationally hypergamous marriages) to the sum of the

lower left off-diagonal cells (i.e., the educationally hypogamous marriages) increased

from 1.35 to 1.53 between 2000 and 2010, revealing a stronger trend toward „marrying

up‟ among women in educationally heterogamous unions. When the comparison groups

are restricted to heterogamy that crosses at least two educational levels (i.e., the sum of

the upper right three cells to the sum of the lower left three cells), the ratios changed from

1.43 to 1.94 over this ten-year period. In other words, there is a stronger trend toward

hypergamy formed between much better-educated grooms and less-educated brides in

2010 than in 2000 among all heterogamous marriages.

Cheng: Marriage patterns by education in Taiwan

1020 http://www.demographic-research.org

6.2 Changes due to availability of eligible partners or to magnitude of marriage

attraction

The next set of analyses aims to explore the marriage patterns by looking at how the shift

in educational gradient of marriage reflects changes in the availability of eligible partners

or changes in the force of attraction. To investigate the former, the number of marriages

that would have occurred in 2010 was calculated by holding the force of attraction

observed in 2000 constant. Hence, the ratios of the predicted 2010 marriage rates (by sex

and age group) to the actual marriage rates observed in 2000 measure the change in the

availability of eligible partners between 2000 and 2010. On the other hand, the ratios of

the actual 2010 marriage rates to the predicted marriage rates observed in 2010 measure

the change in the force of attraction between 2000 and 2010. These ratios were averaged

across prime age groups from 20 to 49 to acquire a summary measure for a given

education match. A mean value greater than 1 indicates a positive change in eligible

partners or force of attraction. These procedures were carried out for both sexes, and the

findings are presented in Table 2.

The upper panel of Table 2 reveals that, in 2010, men with the least education who

were in hypogamous marriages faced a surplus of eligible better-educated female

partners. All men in unions involving a college-educated woman also experienced a

surplus of eligible female partners in 2010. The majority of men in the other marriage

matches experienced a shortage of women. The least educated men were the only group

who married less in the face of an improved pool of eligible partners, which is very likely

due to their dim economic prospects. Marriage behaviors of men in other groups rose and

fell with the changes in the composition of the marriage market between 2000 and 2010.

From the women‟s perspective, college-educated women in all types of union faced a

shortage of eligible men in 2010, but availability of potential spouses generally improved

for most women without a college degree. The lower panel of Table 2 shows that from

both men‟s and women‟s perspectives, almost every group experienced a tremendous

decline in propensity to marry, except for unions where at least one partner is

college-educated (i.e., marriage types m3-f4, m4-f4, and m4-f3). One important finding

to be noted is that despite a shortage of eligible men (with at least some tertiary

education) for college-educated women, a positive change in force of attraction indicates

that an increasing share of these women still managed to find a partner. In sharp contrast,

the least educated men experienced a tremendous decline in marriage propensity despite

being in a marriage market with a surplus of eligible women. Similarly, women without a

college education also experienced much lower propensity to marry, even though most of

them saw an improvement in eligible men.

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Table 2: Changes in availability of eligible partners and force of attraction by

education level between 2000 and 2010 (ages 20 to 49)

Changes in Eligible Partners 2000 vs. 2010

Men

Groom

Women

Groom

<HS

Jr. College

College+

<HS

Jr. College

College+

Bride

<HS

1.01

0.71

0.99

0.58

Bride

<HS

1.07

1.51

1.91

2.10

1.09

0.88

1.00

0.77

0.85

1.15

1.21

1.74

Jr. College

1.06

0.66

0.92

0.62

Jr. College

0.99

1.12

1.15

1.44

College+

1.89

1.66

1.44

1.06

College+

0.62

0.81

0.76

0.95

Changes in Force of Attraction 2000 vs. 2010

Men

Groom

Women

Groom

<HS

Jr. College

College+

<HS

Jr. College

College+

Bride

<HS

0.32

0.46

0.34

0.37

Bride

<HS

0.40

0.50

0.36

0.45

0.30

0.50

0.51

0.68

0.37

0.63

0.56

0.67

Jr. College

0.24

0.66

0.68

0.98

Jr. College

0.20

0.67

0.73

1.05

College+

0.31

0.84

1.46

1.15

College+

0.22

0.80

1.29

1.30

Note: A value greater than 1 indicates a positive change in eligible partners or force of attraction, and a value smaller than 1 a negative

change between 2000 and 2010.

To sum up, the marriage decline that took place between 2000 and 2010 was

accompanied by a reversal of educational gradient in marriage propensities, from

negative to positive, for both men and women. Educational homogamy increased, and the

proportion of educational hypergamy also increased within heterogamous unions. All of

these patterns were mainly driven by changes in marriage propensities, rather than

compositional shifts in the availability of eligible partners.

7. Potential explanations for the differential retreat from marriage

Analyses using two sets of social survey data (the Taiwan Social Trend Survey (TSTS)

and the Taiwan Social Change Survey (TSCS)) collected in recent years were conducted

to explore the attitudinal causes of differential retreat from marriage. Table 3 shows that a

positive educational gradient in marriage intention among singles was observed from

Cheng: Marriage patterns by education in Taiwan

1022 http://www.demographic-research.org

1998 to 2006 for both men and women. Single men with tertiary education

were nearly

two times more likely (OR=1.75, p<.0001, Model 1) than the least educated single men to

indicate a future marriage plan, whereas single women with similar education were three

times more likely (OR=3.02, p<.0001, in Model 3) than the least educated to express a

marriage intention, holding all other covariates constant. Such a positive educational

gradient has become stronger over time. A closer look at data from separate years

indicates that such a gradient only emerged after the millennium (in the 2002 and 2006

TSTS, but not the 1998 survey), which is also reflected in the significant interaction

terms of education and survey year shown in Models 2 and 4. When considered with the

macro-level marriage trend presented earlier, the best educated men and women are not

only marrying more, but also have stronger motivation to enter a marital union than their

less-educated counterparts. Such a low marriage intention among the least educated is

likely to further bring down their already low marriage rates in the future.

Additional analyses were carried out to explore the perceived key factor for a happy

marriage. The results in Table 4 show a convergence of value in the most selected factor

for both single men and women between 1998 and 2006. Before the millennium many

more single men and women stressed the importance of economic standing as the

foundation for a happy marriage. Even though in 2006 a quarter to two-fifths of

never-married single men and women still think that a good economic standing is

important for a happy marriage, a lot more of them endorse “mutual trust and tolerance”

across all groups. While men and women seem to become similar in terms of their

perceptions of a happy marriage, their attitudes toward sex roles and marriage still differ

substantially. For the five attitudinal variables examined in Table 5, men with lower

education are particularly slow to adapt to an egalitarian gender relation. Holding age and

marital status constant, men with tertiary education are significantly more likely than

their least educated counterparts to adopt liberal sex-role and marriage attitudes.

Better-educated men are less likely to agree with a traditional division of labor between

men and women, to think that a woman should put her husband‟s career before her own,

and to believe a bad marriage is better than being single or divorced. They are more likely

than the least educated men to believe that men should help with more household chores

than they do now. In another set of analyses, single women are more liberal than single

men on four of the five items after age and education are controlled for, revealing a

discrepancy in sex-role and marriage values between the two sexes (results shown in the

bottom panel of Table 5).

The response categories for education in the TSTS data vary between 1998 and later years. Junior college and

college are collapsed into one response category for 2002 and 2006 to make the models comparable. The TSTS

terminated in 2006, so models for years beyond 2006 cannot be presented.

The expansion of education in Taiwan might lead one to think that the proportion of adults without a high

school degree is very small. Yet the 2010 vital statistics show that about 18% of the adult men and women

between the ages of 20 and 49 did not have a high school degree.

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Table 3: Odds ratios predicting marriage intention among never-married men

and women ages 25 to 49 by education (Stacked file of Taiwan Social

Trend Survey, 1998, 2002, and 2006)

Model 1

Men

Model 2

Men

Model 3

Women

Model 4

Women

Survey Year (ref. 1998)

2002

0.51

***

0.44

***

0.62

0.36

2006

0.51

***

0.30

***

0.58

***

0.27

Age (ref. age 30-34)

25-29

30-34

1.04

1.03

0.71

35-39

0.80

†

0.79

0.40

***

0.40

***

40-44

0.50

***

0.51

***

0.25

***

0.24

***

45-49

0.30

***

0.30

***

0.20

***

0.21

***

Education (ref. <HS)

High school

1.35

0.95

1.85

1.25

Jr. college and above

1.75

***

1.14

3.02

***

1.63

Education x Survey Year

(ref. <HS & 1998)

HS*2002

1.32

1.60

Jr. college+ *2002

1.26

2.13

†

HS*2006

1.92

2.04

Jr. college+ *2006

2.28

2.70

Sample size N

6128

3888

† p<.10; * p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001

Note: Question wording for marriage intention in all three waves of TSTS: “Do you intend to marry in the future?” The response

categories are Yes or No.

Cheng: Marriage patterns by education in Taiwan

1024 http://www.demographic-research.org

Table 4: Response distributions of the most important factor for a happy

marriage reported by never-married respondents ages 25 to 49 by

education (1998 and 2006 Taiwan Social Trend Survey)

1998

2006

Single Men

<HS

Jr.

College+

<HS

Jr.

College+

Love

17.44

13.15

14.51

7.77

6.96

9.15

Having a good economic

standing

39.95

41.78

37.64

41.02

35.56

22.34

Compatible values and interests

9.02

13.75

12.82

8.66

13.12

17.09

Mutual trust and tolerance

22.31

20.28

24.04

32.49

38.67

45.13

Similar family background

1.25

0.1

0.71

0.52

0.81

0.96

Good sex life

0.93

1.59

0.71

0.39

0.2

0.41

Having individual freedom

0.79

2.88

0.6

2.34

1.09

1.48

Get along with spouse's family

2.97

2.81

1.84

1.11

1.21

2.2

Health

5.34

3.37

7.14

5.54

2.26

1.24

Other

0.29

0.17

0.12

Subgroup size (n)

288

363

311

532

992

1049

Single Women

<HS

Jr.

College+

<HS

Jr.

College+

Love

31.22

23.40

20.35

7.54

9.36

9.06

Having a good economic

standing

24.78

33.77

32.42

29.43

31.96

23.77

Compatible values and interests

10.44

10.77

17.09

6.73

11.32

14.39

Mutual trust and tolerance

23.82

17.57

22.83

42.76

41.6

44.58

Similar family background

2.69

1.61

0.18

0.55

0.23

1.33

Good sex life

0.63

0.32

0.15

Having individual freedom

1.81

0.94

1.66

1.6

2.9

Get along with spouse's family

3.24

0.59

1.07

0.54

1.28

Health

4.76

7.2

5.27

10.11

3.13

2.26

Other

2.29

0.15

0.26

0.28

Subgroup size (n)

185

242

122

540

1157

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Table 5: OLS regression models analyzing gender differences in sex-role and

marriage attitudes among all men and among never-married adults

between the ages of 20 and 49 (N=635, Taiwan Social Change Survey

2006)

All Men

Q1. A husband's

main responsibility

is to be the

breadwinner and

wife the

housekeeper.

Q2. Men should

help with more

domestic

chores than

they do now.

Q3. It is more

important for a

wife to help with

her husband's

career than to

develop her own

career.

Q4. Having a bad

marriage is still

better than staying

single.

Q5. Having a bad

marriage is still

better than getting

a divorce.

Education (ref.: <HS)

High school

-0.47*

0.22

-0.09

-0.37

-0.39†

Jr. college & above

-1.60***

0.50**

-0.95***

-1.04***

-0.84***

Marital Status

Ever married (ref.)

Never-married

-0.60**

-0.06

-0.33†

-0.13

-0.19

Sample size (n)

635

Never-married Adults

Men (ref.: women)

0.58***

-0.34**

0.23†

0.24

0.31*

Education (ref.: <HS)

High school

-0.17

0.39

0.41

-0.20

-0.75*

Jr. college & above

-1.44***

0.75**

-0.63*

-0.88*

-0.94**

Sample size (n)

484

† p<.10; * p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001

Note: Each statement is measured on a scale of 1 to 7, with higher values indicating stronger approval. All regression models control

for a respondent's age in 5-year age groups. Ever married respondents include those who are currently married, divorced, and

widowed.

On the economic front, unemployment rates have been on the rise since the

mid-1990s for men and women of all educational levels (see Figure 1). In particular, men

without tertiary education have experienced tremendous growth in unemployment in the

post-millennium years, and the risk of being out of work is much higher among

blue-collar male workers than female workers. In the 1980s men without a high school

degree used to have lower unemployment rates than men in other educational groups, but

in 2009 the proportion of them losing jobs reached an unprecedented high. The cyclical

labor market situations after 2000 affect young adults‟ economic prospects not only

through heightened unemployment but also through lowered average earnings across

major occupations in the one to two years after the economic shocks of 2001 and 2008

(DGBAS 2013). In addition, since the 1990s inflation-adjusted disposable income levels

Cheng: Marriage patterns by education in Taiwan

1026 http://www.demographic-research.org

have been declining for workers in all social groups (DGBAS 1987−2010). Despite

Taiwan‟s sustained economic growth (averaging 4.10% annually) in gross domestic

product (GDP) from 2000 to 2010, employee compensation as a proportion of GDP

declined from 51.7% in 1990 to 44.6% in 2010, which is an all-time low since 1990

(DGBAS 2010). That is, the profits and gains have not been justly distributed to laborers

and employees in the era of post-industrialization, which is vividly reflected in the

percentile distribution of disposable income for both men and women. According to the

annual Survey of Family Income and Expenditure, even though income improved

between 1995 and 2000 for the 20

, 50

th,

and 90

percentiles for both sexes, barely any

increase in disposable income at the 20

and 50

percentiles is observed in the following

decade of 2000-2010. The only group that experienced substantial income gain during

this period was the most advantaged high-income earners in the 90

income percentile

(DGBAS 1995−2010). In other words, wage levels have stagnated and even declined for

over a decade in the face of continuous annual inflation, and the majority of Taiwanese

laborers, particularly those from the lower class, are feeling that economic stress.

Now that Taiwan is transformed into a post-industrial society, the bleak economic

outlook of male low-skilled manual workers raises worries for women who are looking

for potential partners from a pool of men with limited means. As labor force participation

rates grew substantially among women without a high school degree between the prime

working ages of 20 to 50, from 48.06% in 1995 to 60.06% in 2010, the unemployment

rates of men without tertiary education also increased dramatically (as shown in Figure

1). By contrast, the unemployment rates of college-educated men and women have

converged over the past few decades. As men‟s economic prospects are still a crucial

determinant of marriage in times of rising inequality, the loss of jobs due to relocation of

manufacturing factories to other developing countries has made marriage unaffordable

for many blue-collar workers. Along with obstacles to reemployment in a service and

knowledge economy, men with the least socioeconomic resources have experienced

tremendous status loss in the marriage market. Overall, both slower attitudinal change

toward gender equality among men of lower class and deterioration of their economic

well-being have translated into rapidly dropping marriage propensities among

disadvantaged men in recent years. The better educated are now more likely to wed,

largely because they have adapted better to new values and the changing economic

structure.

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Figure 1: Unemployment rates by sex and education in Taiwan, 1978−2010

Unemployment rates (%) among HS men and women

Men

Women

Unemployment rates (%) among <HS men and women

Men

Women

Cheng: Marriage patterns by education in Taiwan

1028 http://www.demographic-research.org

Figure 1: (Continued)

Unemployment rates (%) among junior college men and women

Unemployment rates (%) among college+ men and women

Source: Data acquired from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting, and Statistics, Executive Yuan, Taiwan.

http://www.dgbas.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=18843&ctNode=4943.

Men

Women

Men

Women

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8. The role of cohabitation in an era of marriage decline

Family literature in the West often discusses how marriage decline is accompanied by a

surge in the prevalence of co-residential unions (Bumpass, Sweet, and Cherlin 1991;

Heard 2011; Kalmijn 2007). While cohabitation is relatively less common and still

stigmatized in Asian countries (Jones 2007), the prevalence of cohabitation in Taiwan is

rising over time (Lesthaeghe 2010). However, questions about marital status in major

large-scale social surveys and the censuses often group the currently cohabiting and

married individuals as one category, and they are indistinguishable in the dataset. Among

the very few datasets that specifically asked about the experience of cohabitation are the

1998 and 2004 KAP surveys.

Descriptive analyses (results not shown) using these two

rounds of KAP indicate that cohabitation as a union type increased between 1998 and

2004. For single women aged 20 to 49, cohabitation became more prevalent among the

younger generations and among the less educated. The increase in cohabitation among

married women differs very little across cohorts and education. It is very likely that part

of the decline in marital unions was substituted by cohabiting unions, especially if the

prevalence of cohabitation among the unmarried population increased more among the

less educated than the better educated in the KAP data. Although there is evidence

showing an increasing prevalence of co-residential unions over time, cohabitation could

have very different meanings for different social groups. On the one hand, it could be that

cohabitation has replaced marriage among the less educated and the total union formation

intensities are actually not decreasing when cohabitation is taken into account. On the

other hand, cohabitation could also be rising among the better educated but serving only

as a „test-run‟ for marriage. These are two untestable hypotheses at this point. As panel

surveys that include comprehensive records and measures of cohabitation are still lacking

in Taiwan, the extent to which cohabitation has become a substitute of or a prelude to

marriage awaits more empirical investigation in future research.

9. Discussion

This study set out to investigate the changing partner choice and differential marriage

propensities by education in an era of marriage decline in post-millennium Taiwan.

The KAP (Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice) survey is a collaboration between the Population Studies

Center at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the Taiwan Provincial Institute of Family Planning to

collect data on marriage, family values, fertility preferences, and contraceptive use. The first wave of the KAP

survey was conducted in 1965. The survey has been continuously carried out over the years, and the last survey

wave was administered in 2008. The sample sizes for the different waves vary from over 3,000 to about 5,000

female respondents of childbearing age between age 15 and 49.

Cheng: Marriage patterns by education in Taiwan

1030 http://www.demographic-research.org

Results of this study indicate that while all educational groups experienced marriage

decline between 2000 and 2010, the drop is particularly drastic among the least educated.

Because of their relatively mild decrease in marriage propensities, in 2010 men and

women with tertiary education became more likely to marry than their less-educated

counterparts. The most recent education-marriage patterns observed support hypothesis

H1a where more education is associated with stronger marriage intensities among

women. This is a reversal of the negative educational differentials in marriage intensity

revealed by the 2000 data. As in many Western societies, Oppenheimer‟s theory appears

to line up better with the most recent marriage patterns by education in Taiwan. Women

with more socioeconomic resources are marrying more, especially with men who have

similar levels of education.

As for the patterns of partner choice, a larger share of educational homogamy is

observed in 2010 than in 2000, mainly driven by an increase in homogamy among the

better educated. In addition, hypothesis H2b is supported: the proportions of

educationally hypergamous marriages of all heterogamy also increased between 2000

and 2010. These findings show that in an era of growing economic uncertainty the better

educated are increasingly more likely to marry a partner with similar background. For

better-educated women, marrying down with men without any tertiary education has

become a less feasible choice, despite their own rising financial independence. Thus,

although improvement in women‟s socioeconomic attainment in Taiwanese society

could open up broader possibilities for spouse selection, the marriage patterns observed

suggest that a continuing preference for men‟s economic resources in a

post-industrialized context is likely to further perpetuate the traditional pattern of

hypergamy. While prior research by Chu and Yu (2010) showed a decline of homogamy

between the pre-1970s and 1990s cohorts, the findings here suggest a rise in homogamy

during the post-2000 period. These results resonate with the assortative mating patterns

of Korean adults in recent marriage cohorts − the rise and fall of homogamy has followed

a U-shaped pattern across cohorts, and hypergamy dominates all heterogamous

marriages (Park and Smits 2005).

Further analyses show that the changes in marriage propensities across groups are

due to an overall drop in the propensity to marry rather than to a shortage of potential

partners. In fact, a surplus of eligible male partners is observed from 2000 to 2010 for the

majority of women without college education, yet the force of attraction for these women

decreased over the same period. By contrast, college-educated women displayed a

stronger propensity to marry men with similar education, despite facing a shortage of

eligible partners. Similar patterns were reported in Qian and Preston‟s (1993) study,

where increased marriage rates were observed among college-educated American

women in the 1970s and 1980s, despite a decline in the availability of eligible men. This

also goes along with recent research that shows how the compositional effect of

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education has played a very small role in explaining the overall retreat from matrimony in

East Asian countries (Jones and Gubhaju 2009). In fact, although improvements in the

socioeconomic status of women are often argued to cause retreat from marriage, in

Taiwan the best-educated women seem to become more desirable partners and show

stronger intentions and behaviors to establish new families.

This study observed changes in marriage market composition in Taiwan between

2000 and 2010, similar to Raymo and Iwasawa‟s (2005) decomposition analyses.

However, while the marriage decline among better-educated Japanese women is driven

by a shortage of marriageable men, college-educated Taiwanese women actually had a

higher propensity to marry (with similarly educated men), despite facing a smaller pool

of eligible men. Raymo and Iwasawa have partly attributed the decline in marriage

among better-educated Japanese women to the difficulty in combining work and family.

The employment situation of married women in Taiwan appears more promising than in

Japan, as a recent study showed that employment rates of married mothers with

preschool-aged children in Taiwan have increased from 34% in 1983 to 62% in 2006 (Jao

and Li 2012). In spite of limited state-supported childcare, motherhood (or marriage)

and employment seem to have become complements rather than substitutes across

cohorts of married women in Taiwan, which may not be the case in the Japanese context

revealed in Raymo and Iwasawa‟s 2005 research.

In contrast to well-educated women, the majority of Taiwanese women with less

than college education faced a surplus of eligible partners at most education levels, yet

their propensity to marry showed a dramatic decline from 2000 to 2010. The analyses

presented earlier suggest that the slower attitudinal changes among less-educated men

might have caused their female counterparts to hesitate over the idea of marriage. On the

other hand, it is also likely that men have come to appreciate the earning capacity of

better-educated women, and thus the less-educated women are having problems

marrying up with better-educated men.

This study further explores the compositional changes of the exposure population

by education. The findings suggest that an important explanation for the tremendous

decline in marriage propensity among the less educated is likely due to divorce and

remarriage patterns. Given the negative educational gradient in divorce that has emerged

since the 1990s (Chen 2012) and the fact that remarriage rates have been much lower

among the less-educated men and women

, the proportion of divorced individuals among

the less-educated population at risk of marriage has been expanding constantly over the

years. Recent vital statistics show that the proportions of divorced individuals at prime

marrying ages are particularly high among the less-educated men and women, and this

Only about 4% of all births in Taiwan were non-marital childbearing in 2010.

Author‟s own calculations based on vital statistics data on remarriages released by the Department of

Household Registration, Ministry of the Interior, Taiwan.

Cheng: Marriage patterns by education in Taiwan

1032 http://www.demographic-research.org

trend has been increasing since 2000. Such an expansion in the marriageable population

has suppressed the overall marriage intensities among the less educated. Along with a

rapid drop in number of marriages among the less educated shown in Appendix 1, which

is faster than the speed of educational upgrading over the past decade, a rapid decline in

marriage intensities among the more disadvantaged population in Taiwan has become an

inevitable reality. By contrast, the growth in marriages involving college-educated men

and women between 2000 and 2010 was substantial (130% for men and 158% for

women), outpacing the growth in college-educated male and female population. This is

why compositional changes have played a small role in explaining the new patterns

observed.

As wages have stagnated and unemployment rates have reached record-high levels,

the deteriorating economic well-being of young employees is a structural cause of the

recent dramatic decline in marriage rates and the reversal of educational differentials in

marriage. Over the past two decades disposable income at most distribution percentiles

has declined, except for the richest. The undesirable consequences of industrial

outsourcing and income inequality in a post-industrial society have had a tremendous

impact on the lives of many young individuals. This is congruent with findings in the

United States, where the effects of men‟s education and economic characteristics on

marriage likelihood have become more salient for the 1961-65 cohort than for the

1950-54 cohort. In other words, the role of men‟s economic standing in entry into

marriage remains crucial as women‟s earning capacity rises (Sweeney 2002). Similarly,

findings reported for the Antipodean countries of Australia and New Zealand also reveal

deteriorating union formation prospects for less-educated low-income men (Heard 2011).

In fact, a similar plight among low-skilled disadvantaged men has been documented in

many countries experiencing globalization and a deregulated economy in a

post-industrial context (Blossfeld and Buchholz 2009; Blossfeld et al. 2006;

Esping-Andersen 2009). While governments in Taiwan and in Singapore are

coordinating matchmaking social activities to raise the marriage rates of middle-class

college graduates (CNBC 2012), public policy should also focus on the welfare of the

disadvantaged sector of the population.

Moreover, shifting ideas about the foundation of a happy marriage show a

convergence between men and women across social groups. Yet a sex gap remains for

sex-role values and marriage attitudes. The least educated men, in particular, are more

resistant to adopting liberal gender-role values. In turn, negotiating for an egalitarian

relationship becomes more of an attainable goal for better-educated men and women. All

things considered, gender equality is still an unfinished revolution. When considering the

two distinct stages of gender revolution discussed in Goldscheider, Olah, and Puur‟s

(2010) recent research, Taiwan is certainly still moving slowly toward the second stage

where equality in the family sphere is attained. More efforts are needed so that both men

Demographic Research: Volume 31, Article 33

http://www.demographic-research.org 1033

and women, particularly the less educated, can see a convergence in their views on an

ideal intimate relationship and a happy marriage. Both family formation and union

stability can be expected to increase when such a consensus is reached (Goldscheider,

Oláh, and Puur 2010). These findings also resonate with Schoen‟s (2011) recent

arguments that the role of “gender competition” in linking socioeconomic and ideational

developments to contemporary family changes is crucial, and that the delay in the second

stage of the gender revolution is likely due to a pushback from men. Overall, before a

reconciliation between men and women can be reached regarding acceptable

arrangements in domestic division of labor and a common expectation for marriage, the

trend toward further decline in marriage rates seem to be inevitable in the years to come,

although part of this downward pressure can certainly be offset by improvements in

economic opportunities.

The majority of research on marriage decline has focused on women‟s changing

values and attitudes, but the analysis here shows that across all social groups men, too,

are embracing new ideas about the fundamental pillars of a happy marriage. As discussed

earlier, it is the discrepancy in gender-role and marriage attitudes between men and

women that appears to make marriage an unattractive life choice for many young adults

in Taiwan, and perhaps in many other parts of East Asia as well. As marriage is a result of

dyadic interactions and negotiations between the two sexes, men‟s desires and beliefs

certainly contribute to the redefinition of dyadic relationship and family formation and

should not be omitted in research on contemporary family change (Le Bourdais and

Lapierre-Adamcyk 2004; Schoen 2011).

One thing to be noted is that since the 1990s foreign spouses have played a crucial

part in the Taiwanese marriage market.

The impact of such a social phenomenon on the

analyses presented earlier is that the marriage rates/propensities were underestimated to

different extents, because these marriages were counted in the numerators but the foreign

women (and men to a much lesser extent) at risk of marriage were not included in the

exposure population. The actual marriage propensities for unions that involve spouses

with high-school-or-less education should have been lower because the majority of

foreign spouses did not have any tertiary education (e.g., about 95% of Southeast Asian

and 85% Mainland Chinese spouses received high school or lower education in 2008). In

other words, the positive educational gradient in marriage intensities observed in 2010

would have been more pronounced if the information regarding country of origin had

been available and the eligible foreign women and men at risk of marriage had been

included as part of the marriageable population.

About 25% and 16% of the marriages registered in 2000 and 2010 were formed between a Taiwanese and a

foreign spouse. The great majority of these foreign marriage migrants did not have citizenship at the time of

marriage

and the majority of them are foreign brides (i.e., 93% and 82% of foreign spouses were female in

2000 and 2010 respectively).

Cheng: Marriage patterns by education in Taiwan

1034 http://www.demographic-research.org

This study is one of the few studies that explore marriage differentials by education

in Asia. In the decade after the millennium marriage propensities have increased for

unions between better-educated men and women and decreased for other unions that

involve less-educated individuals. Even though in 2010 the percentage of ever married by

age 50 is still higher among less-educated women than the better educated, the social

differential in life-time ever married rates could reverse in the future if the positive

educational gradient in marriage intensities observed in 2010 persists over a longer

period of time. In Japan a recent panel study on 1,500 women born in 1959 to 1979

(surveyed in 1993 to 2008) showed an emerging positive association between women‟s

earnings and marriage probabilities among the 1970s cohorts (Fukuda 2013). The

analyses here show additional evidence of a positive social gradient in marriage from a

period perspective in an advanced East Asian economy. These findings go along with the

expanding social divide that has been shown in many developed societies in recent years

(Furstenberg 2008; Kalmijn 2013; Meier and Allen 2008; Smits and Park 2009) where

education is increasingly associated with more favorable life outcomes, and such a social

inequality further penetrates into the well-being of the next generation (McLanahan

2004). Finally, as societies go through the process of post-industrialization it remains an

open question whether more East Asian countries will show a positive educational

gradient in marriage likelihood and further improve on gender equity in school, work

settings, and inside the family. More research is certainly needed to unravel the impact of

education on men and women‟s family formation prospects and how matrimony in Asia

might reinforce and reproduce social inequality.

10. Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan under Grant

#102-2410-H-001-073-MY2. The author would like to thank Drs. Robert Schoen and Yu

Xie and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on earlier versions of this

paper. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the

Population Association of America in Boston, MA. The author also thanks Fen-chieh

Felice Wu for excellent research assistance.

Demographic Research: Volume 31, Article 33

http://www.demographic-research.org 1035

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Appendices

Appendix 1: Number of marriages formed by men and women in different

educational groups between 2000 and 2010

Men

Women

Year

<HS

Jr. College

College+

<HS

Jr. College

College+

2000

74303

60579

25241

22905

61363

69550

31815

20300

2010

20442

41269

19530

52581

22593

38043

20899

52287

% changes

-72%

-32%

-23%

130%

-63%

-45%

-34%

158%

Cheng: Marriage patterns by education in Taiwan

1042 http://www.demographic-research.org

Appendix 2: Changes in marriage propensities by age and educational matches

between 2000 and 2010†

MEN

m1-f1

m1-f2

m1-f3

m1-f4

m2-f1

m2-f2

m2-f3

m2-f4

m3-f1

m3-f2

m3-f3

m3-f4

m4-f1

m4-f2

m4-f3

m4-f4

20-24

-0.2403

-0.1179

-0.0324

-0.0040

-0.1316

-0.0859

-0.0180

0.0009

-0.0319

-0.0156

-0.0353

0.0083

-0.0063

-0.0012

0.0010

-0.0030

25-29

-0.6619

-0.3211

-0.1876

-0.0865

-0.3700

-0.2029

-0.0724

0.0201

-0.2298

-0.1551

-0.2565

0.0579

-0.1315

-0.0087

-0.0099

-0.1009

30-34

-0.6535

-0.3165

-0.1636

-0.0961

-0.3097

-0.1808

-0.0583

-0.0172

-0.1703

-0.1283

-0.1199

0.0750

-0.1435

-0.0366

0.0094

0.1682

35-39

-0.4704

-0.2269

-0.1169

-0.0500

-0.1723

-0.1483

-0.0497

-0.0226

-0.0886

-0.1175

0.0007

0.0499

-0.0760

-0.0620

0.0130

0.1594

40-44

-0.2576

-0.1340

-0.0838

-0.0385

-0.1020

-0.0938

-0.0499

-0.0103

-0.0614

-0.0846

-0.0159

0.0202

-0.0433

-0.0673

-0.0093

0.0671

45-49

-0.1276

-0.0963

-0.0609

-0.0341

-0.0636

-0.0508

-0.0298

-0.0218

-0.0765

-0.0752

-0.0186

0.0024

-0.0321

-0.0519

-0.0184

0.0219

WOMEN

m1-f1

m1-f2

m1-f3

m1-f4

m2-f1

m2-f2

m2-f3

m2-f4

m3-f1

m3-f2

m3-f3

m3-f4

m4-f1

m4-f2

m4-f3

m4-f4

20-24

-0.7778

-0.4707

-0.2754

-0.1001

-0.3556

-0.3134

-0.1683

-0.0476

-0.1352

-0.1504

-0.2152

-0.0044

-0.0370

-0.0432

-0.0402

-0.0444

25-29

-0.9243

-0.3881

-0.2358

-0.1176

-0.4954

-0.2527

-0.1161

-0.0086

-0.3273

-0.2179

-0.2942

0.0742

-0.2616

-0.0798

-0.0619

-0.1540

30-34

-0.4354

-0.1652

-0.1143

-0.0748

-0.1922

-0.1175

-0.0058

-0.0053

-0.1284

-0.1235

0.0055

0.0820

-0.1292

-0.0616

0.0379

0.3029

35-39

-0.1684

-0.1077

-0.0807

-0.0350

-0.0725

-0.0698

-0.0259

-0.0137

-0.0609

-0.0746

0.0185

0.0304

-0.0284

-0.0795

0.0003

0.1602

40-44

-0.0869

-0.0682

-0.0600

-0.0299

-0.0552

-0.0456

-0.0210

-0.0079

-0.0660

-0.0658

-0.0185

0.0008

-0.0172

-0.0484

-0.0046

0.0517

45-49

-0.0505

-0.0415

-0.0483

-0.0248

-0.0554

-0.0243

-0.0285

-0.0069

-0.0581

-0.0380

-0.0257

-0.0091

-0.0294

-0.0361

0.0089

-0.0077

Note: Numbers in column labels refer to educational levels from “1=no high school degree”, “2=high school graduate”, “3=junior college”, and “4=college and above.”

Hence, “m1-f3” indicates marriages between men without a high school degree and women with junior college education.

† The table above only presents marriage propensities for ages 20 to 49 because these are prime marrying ages and are more indi

cative of major behavioral

changes. Marriage propensities for ages 50 and older tend to be much lower than for younger ages.