CHANGES IN MARITAL DISSOLUTION PATTERNS AMONG CHINESE AND CHINESE
IMMIGRANTS: AN ORIGIN-DESTINATION ANALYSIS
Yuanting Zhang
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
December 2007
Committee:
Jennifer Van Hook, Advisor
Nancy Boudreau Graduate Faculty Representative
Franklin Goza
Susan Brown
Laura Sanchez ii
ABSTRACT
Jennifer Van Hook, Advisor
Among the concerns about the assimilability of new immigrant groups from Asia and
Latin American countries, one unchallenged, unstated assumption is that these groups bring the strong family values and family ties into American society. Whether new Asian immigrant groups assimilate into American divorce culture the longer they stay in the U.S. is not well studied, nor is it clear how marital dissolution patterns change across immigrant generations.
My research goal is to examine the current trends and patterns of marital dissolution (divorce or separation) among Chinese and assess whether Chinese immigrants to the U.S. have more stable marriages than the Chinese in China. The specific analyses conducted are designed to test hypotheses based on the assimilation, selection and abruption effect frameworks (Singley and
Landale 1998). Several data sets, including the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) and the China 1990 and 2000 Censuses, were used to examine the complexity of marriage and divorce in China. For the Chinese immigrants in the US, the 1990 and 2000 Integrated
Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation
(SIPP) were used. Unique to my study were that the hypotheses I tested differentiated the selection, abruption and assimilation effects by mode-of-entry of Chinese immigrants.
Overall, despite much speculation about rising divorce rates in China, the rates remain relatively low. In general, my findings show that Chinese immigrants, especially the newly- arrived female immigrants from China, are more likely to divorce/separate. Unlike women in China, Chinese female immigrants overtake their male counterparts in terms of marital dissolution rates for almost every generational status. This suggests that U.S. society iii has given women more leverage and room to choose their spouse and to be less tolerant of bad marriages. There was also some evidence of an abruption effect among the less-educated
Chinese male immigrants as they displayed even lower divorce rates compared to their male counterparts in the immigrant-sending regions in China. Also, there is some weak evidence for the assimilation hypothesis among the Chinese men over the generations, but the pattern does not hold for Chinese women. Moreover, there is no evidence for the segmented assimilation hypothesis, as the divorce rates among the highly educated Chinese are not similar to the upper middle class Americans, and the divorce rates among the less-educated Chinese do not resemble the divorce patterns of working class Americans either. Furthermore, mixed marriages involving Asians in general are less stable than Asian endogamous marriages. For
Chinese, however, the most unstable marriage is between foreign-born and American-born
Chinese or Chinese with American citizenship. This suggests that there are Chinese who are trying to take advantage of the American immigration system and use marriage as a tool to achieve their goal of immigrating to the U.S. iv
To my father, Cunsheng Zhang, whose support makes me even more proud of my work.
v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my committee, Dr. Jennifer Van Hook, Dr. Franklin Goza, Dr.
Susan Brown, Dr. Laura Sanchez, and Dr. Nancy Boudreau for their guidance, comments, and all their sincere help with this project. Dr. Van Hook has been an extraordinary mentor for me throughout my graduate school career and has always been my source of inspiration. Dr. Van
Hook, Dr. Goza, and Dr. Boudreau have been working diligently along with me in perfecting the final version of my dissertation. I thank my husband, Joel Kniep for his unfailing support throughout graduate school. I also want to thank my family, friends and the writer’s lab at
Bowling Green State University for their encouragement and needed assistance throughout this process.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION...... 1
1.1 Statement of the Problem ...... 1
1.2 Brief Review of History of Chinese Immigrants and Prior Research...... 3
1.3 Study Objectives ...... 5
1.4 The Rationale (Contributions and Limitations)...... 6
1.5 Possible Policy Implications ...... 8
1.6 Summary of the Chapters ...... 10
CHAPTER 2: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS …...11
2.1 Introduction...... 11
2.2 Feminist Perspectives ...... 11
2.3 Assimilation, Selection and Abruption Hypothesis ...... 15
2.4 Familism, Gender Perspectives on Marital Dissolution among Immigrants ………..18
CHAPTER 3: PRIOR WORK ON MARITAL DISSOLUTION IN SINO-US CONTEXT ...…23
3.1 Introduction ...... 23
3.2 Marital Dissolution in Chinese Context ...... 23
3.3 Marital Dissolution in the U.S. Context ...... 28
3.4 Common Marital dissolution Risk-Factors for Chinese Marriages ...... 29
3.4a Educational Achievement and Occupation ...... 30
3.4b Urban and Rural Differentials in Marital dissolution Rates ...... 32
3.4c Duration of Marriage, Age at Marriage and Other Risk Factors ...... 33
3.4d Extra Marital Affairs & Remarriage in China ...... 36
3.5 Marriage and Marital dissolution among Chinese Immigrants ...... 41
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3.6 The Stability of Chinese Interracial Marriages ...... 44
CHAPTER 4: DATA AND METHODOLOGY ...... 49
4.1 Data ...... 49
4.1a Data from China…………………………………………………………….49
4.1b Data from the U.S. ………………………………………………………....51
4.1c Constructed Data from Both China and the U.S. …………………………..53
4.2 Mode-of-entry Groups ...... 54
4.3 Hypotheses ...... 56
4.4 Key Variables ...... 61
4.4a Dependent Measures ...... 61
4.4b Independent Variables for the Chinese Data ...... 63
4.4c Independent Variables for the U.S. Data...... 65
4.4d Variable Considered but not included ...... 73
4.5 Logistic Regression & Cox-Proportional Hazards Modeling…………………..……73
4.6 Methodological Limitations …………………………...... 74
CHAPTER 5: RESULTS ON TESTING SELECTION & ABRUPTION HYPOTHESES ……76
5.1 Education and Marital dissolution Rates in China (Hypothesis 1)...... 76
5.1a Results from the CHNS ...... 81
5.1b Results from the Pooled Sino-US 1990 Censuses ...... 82
5.2 Testing for Selection Effects (Hypothesis 2)...... 85
5.2a Selection Effect among Lower-Skilled Chinese Immigrants ...... 87
5.2b Selection Effect among Chinese Professionals in the U.S...... 92
5.3 Testing for Abruption Hypothesis (Hypothesis 3)...... 92
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5.3a Abruption Effect among Lower-Skilled Chinese Immigrants ...... 92
5.3b Abruption Effect among Chinese Professionals in the U.S...... 94
5.3c Abruption Effect among Chinese Mail-order Brides in the U.S...... 95
5.4 Summary of the Chapter ...... 97
CHAPTER 6: RESULTS ON TESTING THE ASSIMILATION & SEGMENTED
ASSIMILATION HYPOTHESES ...... 100
6.1 Testing for the Assimilation Hypothesis (Hypothesis 4)...... 100
6.2 Testing for Segmented Assimilation Hypothesis (Hypothesis 5)...... 111
CHAPTER 7: STABILITY OF INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES ...... 114
CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSIONS ...... 124
8.1 Main Findings on Divorce in China ...... 124
8.2 Main Findings on Divorce among Chinese Immigrants ...... 129
8.3 Implications of the Findings ...... 134
8.4 Limitations……………………………...... 136
8.5 Suggestions for Future Research ...... 138
8.6 Overall Summary ...... 139
REFERENCES ...... 141
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 4.1 Total Number and Proportions of Chinese in Census 2000 PUMs 5% File…………..69
Table 4.2 Married Status (in Proportions) by Detailed Race Variables for Selected Groups …..69
Table 5.1 Descriptive of the Analytical Sample for Chinese Women in the CHNS ……………77
Table 5.2 Hazard Rates of Marital Dissolution among Ever-Married Chinese Women Age
15-52 (N=5,515) ...... ………………………………………………………..………78
Table 5.3 Descriptives of the Analytical Pooled Sino-US 1990 Censuses Sample …..…………79
Table 5.4 Logistic Regression Results of Generation Effect on Marital Dissolution by Gender,
1990……………………………………………………………………………………....80
Tables 5.5 Logistic Regression Results of Marital Dissolution for Chinese with Less than
High School Education…………………………………………………………………..88
Tables 5.6 Logistic Regression Results of Marital Dissolution for Chinese with College
Education or Higher, 1990…………………………………………………………..…...93
Table 5.7 Descriptives for the Analytical Sample for Chinese in the SIPP, N=447……….……95
Table 5.8 Hazard Rates of Marital Dissolution among Chinese Couples (N=447)……………...98
Table 6.1 Descriptives of the Analytical U.S. 2000 Census Sample…………………………...106
Table 6.2 Logistic Regression Models of Marital Dissolution among Chinese Immigrants and
Native-born Non-Hispanic Whites, 2000…………………………………………...….107
Table 6.3 Logistic Regression Models of Marital Dissolution among Chinese Immigrants and
Native-born Non-Hispanic Whites with Less Than a High School Education……...….108
Table 6.4 Logistic Regression Models of Marital Dissolution among Chinese Immigrants and
Native-born Non-Hispanic Whites with a College Education or More……………..….109
Table 7.1 Descriptives of the Analytical Samples…………………………………………...…115
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Table 7.2 Hazard Rates of Martial Dissolution among Couples with at Least One Asian
Spouse by Race and Generational Status…………………………………………...…..117
Table 7.3 Hazard Rates of Marital Dissolution among Couples with at Least One Chinese
Spouse ……………………………………………………………………………..…..118
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 3.1 Crude Divorce Rate in China between 1950-2005…………………………………...25
Figure 3.2 Proportions of Currently Divorced by Age Groups, 2000..………………………….40
Figure 3.3 Proportions of Currently Remarried by Age Groups, 2000...... 40
Figure 4.1 Map of Survey Regions in CHNS……………….…………………………….……..50
Figure 4.2 Mode of Entry for Chinese Nationals to the U.S. by Year………………………...... 55
Figure 4.3 Legal Permanent Resident Status Granted by Mode of Entry among Chinese……....56
Figure 5.1 Bi-national Comparisons of Probability of Being Divorced/Separated by
Education, 1990 ………………………………………………………………………....83
Figure 5.2 Comparisons of 1990 and 2000 Divorce Rates in Fujian Province by Education
and Gender ………………………………………………………………………………90
Figure 5.3 Percentage Divorced at County Level in Fujian Province of China by Gender in 1990
and 2000………………………………………………………………………………... 91
Figure 6.1 Probability of Being Divorced/Separated by Generational Status, 1990…………...101
Figure 6.2 Total Number of Chinese by Year of Immigration, 2000..…………………………101
Figure 6.3 Probability of Being Divorced/Separated by Generational Status, 2000…………...103
Figure 6.4 Probability of Being Divorce/Separated by Gender, Generational Status and
Educational Level, 1990……………………………………………………………..…104
Figure 6.5 Probability of Being Divorce/Separated by Gender, Generational Status and
Educational Level, 2000……………………………………………………………..…105
Figure 7.1 Predicted Hazard Ratios of Marital Dissolution by Mixed Marriage and Citizenship
Among Couples with at least One Asian Partner ……………………………………...120
Figure 7.2 Predicted Hazard Ratios of Marital Dissolution by Marriage Type and Generational
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Status among Couples with at Least One Asian Partner………………………….……121
1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Statement of the Problem
The influx of post-1965 immigrants, with more than 80 percent of the legal immigrants
entering the United States from Latin American and Asian countries, has greatly changed
America’s racial and ethnic composition (Fix and Passel 1994). As a result, Asians and Latinos,
especially Chinese and Mexicans, are the two fastest growing subgroups of the U.S. population
due to the continuing flow of new immigrants and high birth rates among these newcomers
(Buriel and De Men 1997). Whether these groups, especially the second generations, can
successfully assimilate into the mainstream society has great implications for U.S. society in the
near future. Among the concerns about the assimilability of these groups is that the “strong
family values and family ties” that these new immigrant groups are thought to bring into
American society may diminish over time and generations.
A report released by the United Nations in 2004, based on their findings from the World
Fertility Survey (WFS), shows that divorce rates, especially among women, have increased in most developing countries that have available data (United Nations 2004). Marital dissolution and its consequences are well-documented and studied in most DCs (Developed Countries), but not as well in LDCs (Less Developed Countries). Whether new Asian immigrant groups assimilate into American divorce culture the longer they stay in the U.S. is not well studied, nor is it clear how divorce patterns change across immigrant generations. Asian immigrant families have been rarely studied or only used as a comparison group for studying Mexican immigrants.
This is possibly due to the model minority status given to Asian groups, i.e. sometimes Asians are perceived as the “honorary White” by some Americans. This perception is based on their lighter skin color and relatively high educational attainments (Gans 1999). 2
My research focuses on immigrants from China and their families. As such, I will study
the trends and patterns of marital dissolution (divorce or separation) in China, among Chinese
immigrants and Chinese Americans in the U.S. in order to assess the degree to which marital
disruption patterns in China were carried over to the U.S. and whether these patterns are
distinctly different from the U.S. patterns, as well as whether and how marital dissolution
changes over time and between generations in the U.S.
Marital dissolution is also likely to be affected by the level of exogamy, or in other words, marriage to a person belonging to a group other than one’s own, an issue that is especially
salient for Asian immigrants as interracial marriage rates are increasing, especially between
White men and Asian women (Lee and Edmonston 2005). Based on the numbers from the 1996-
2003 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, half of the fiancée visas given were to Asian women
(US Immigration and Naturalization Service 2006). The Philippines, China and Vietnam are the three most popular wife-sending countries. Part of this increase has been facilitated by the recent boom in internet match-making businesses. One of the highlights or sale-points for American men about Asian women is that they are from countries with very low divorce rates and under the strong family-oriented influences of Confucian culture. However, marriage between U.S. nationals and foreigners has generally been viewed as less stable because of the cultural barriers of the exogamous marriage and foreign nationals’ intention to obtain U.S. citizenship through marriage (Neyrand and M'Sili 1998).
China is interesting not only because it is the most populous country in the world and the largest Asian immigrant-sending country to the US, but also because it has a rather skewed sex- ratio and a booming market economy. Rapid ideological changes accompany these shifts and complicate the predictability of future family formation for future generations. The reason I am 3 looking at both mainland Chinese and Chinese immigrants in the U.S. is because I want to test whether there is a selection effect associated with emigration (e.g., Chinese immigrants may belong to a self-selected group of people as they may be more ambitious and adventurous than people who remain in China) and marital dissolution patterns. Comparing mainland Chinese with Chinese in the U.S. can help us better understand whether Chinese culture helps protect immigrant marriages in the U.S. as they assimilate. Furthermore, the assimilation hypothesis
(e.g., the immigrant group behaves more like the mainstream dominant White group in certain behaviors) would not be supported if evidence showed that immigrants of Chinese origin in the
U.S experienced relatively low marital dissolution rates despite prolonged exposure to the U.S. divorce culture (particularly for endogamous couples).
1.2 Brief Review of History of Chinese Immigrants and Prior Research
Family instability is rarely a topic of study, especially among Chinese populations in the
U.S., perhaps owing to a widespread assumption that immigrants share strong family values.
However, such depictions of Chinese immigrants tend to be ahistoric. For example, many
Chinese immigrants originated from China’s Guangdong province and left China because of war and natural disasters and were attracted by the discovery of gold and other opportunities promised by the U.S. Many came as coolies (contract labors), or sojourners (temporary immigrants), with the hope of saving enough money to return to their wives and families in
China. As a result, many of these early Chinese immigrants lived in split households away from their family for years or sought comfort from opium or prostitution in Chinatown (Perl 2003).
Their back-breaking efforts in building American railways and farming systems have long been ignored and instead, they were deemed as “yellow peril” and scapegoats of economic depression 4 at that time, which eventually lead to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. It was not until WWII that the immigration door was reopened to the Chinese and more Chinese women were allowed to come to the U.S. In the 1960s, when U.S. went through many social upheavals, Chinese, along with many Asian sub-groups, were being depicted as model minorities. For more details about early Chinese immigrants and their families and marriages, please see Chapter 3.5.
The lack of research on family instability is particular to Asian subgroups, as this topic has been more systematically studied among Latinos. For example, Bean, Berg and Van Hook
(1996) set a nice example of testing hypotheses derived from assimilation theory by studying union dissolution patterns. Specifically, Bean and associates focused on education and generational status as education serves as an important indicator for socioeconomic assimilation and the generational status as a crucial gauge for cultural incorporation. Moreover, Gupta (2000) documented Mexicans’ cyclical migration to the north and consequences of long periods of separation between spouses on family well being. Furthermore, Landale, Oropesa and Bradatan
(2006) emphasized the importance of familism and stronger family commitment among Hispanic immigrants.
More recently, Frank and Wildsmith empirically tested “the widely accepted assumption that migration contributes to union instability” in a binational context using the Mexican
Migration Project data (2005: 919). They found that migration to the U.S. is related to elevated risks of marital dissolution (Frank and Wildsmith 2005). There have been some attempts to study gender role changes and marital stability among Korean immigrants by using small surveys and ethnographic research (Min 2001). However, no one has looked at family stability among
Asians with a large nationally, representative sample or studied dissolution patterns among Asian groups by generations, let alone made binational comparisons. 5
1.3 Study Objectives
My first research goal is to study the trends and patterns of marital dissolution in China and the heterogeneity within the group, especially variations in marital dissolution rates by education, income and geographic locations. I am interested in studying differentials in marital dissolution rates by examining urban or rural settings1, women’s educational attainment, income,
age at first marriage, presence of child(ren) and other common proxy determinants for predicting
divorce. Particularly, I will examine marital dissolution patterns for the immigrant “sending”
regions in China (Fujian province) and among the college-educated Chinese who are most likely
to come to the U.S. as students. These two populations represent the two most prevalent types of
Chinese immigrants to the U.S. The China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) will be used to
study the basic marital dissolution patterns in China.
Secondly, I will assess whether Chinese immigrants have more stable marriages than
Chinese who remain in China, and if this is true, whether it is due to a selection effect. To detect
selection effects, I will compare the recently-arrived first generation Chinese immigrants with
Chinese in China. Specifically, I will compare the Chinese immigrants of lower educational
status with those in “labor migrants sending” regions in China and Chinese immigrants of higher
educational status with the college-educated Chinese in mainland China. The origin-destination comparisons will predominantly be achieved through comparing the predicted odds of marital
dissolution for Chinese of similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Third, I will compare marital
dissolution between first generation Chinese immigrants of various years of stay in the U.S. with
different generations of native-born Chinese Americans in order to examine whether marital dissolution changes with time and generations in the U.S. Lastly, I will study the stability of
1 According to the residential registration criteria, urban is usually defined by a non-agricultural population of the designated municipalities and towns.(Kirkby 1985). 6
interracial marriages between Chinese and other racial/ethnic groups by comparing them to the
Chinese and non-Hispanic White endogenous marriages in the U.S. The Survey of Income and
Program Participation (SIPP) will be used to study marital dissolution patterns among
interracially married Chinese immigrants and natives.
1.4 The Rationale (Contributions and Limitations)
Research on divorce among immigrants is generally rare, and moreover, previous
research rarely makes binational comparisons, which are necessary to untangle the effects of selection and migration disruption from assimilation effects. What most research lacks or ignores is the continuous study of immigrant family dynamics, mostly due to language barriers and the lack of reliable data (Goode 1993). For example, many analyses published in China are clouded with political and propagandistic aims, and thus, are not dependable (Goode 1993;
Diamant 2000). In addition, nativity or generational differences that remain after controlling for observable socioeconomic and demographic factors tend to be attributed to cultural explanations, which are descriptive rather than explanatory. Such approaches tend to treat family values and behaviors as static dependent variables without considering that family values and behaviors
among immigrants may emerge from the migration process itself.
The second pitfall is that previous research tends to group all Asians together and treats
them as one homogeneous group. Sub-groups are rarely studied, possibly due to lack of data, which further complicates the possibility of doing comparative studies with the country of origin.
Thus, in the proposed research, I will focus on one of the largest Asian sub-groups, the Chinese.
My first attempt is to make origin-destination comparisons to capture the continuity among the 7
first generation migrants and mainland Chinese and examine possible changes in disruption rates
the longer the immigrants stay in the U.S.
The third limitation of previous research is that immigrant women have been
understudied. The few analyses of women that have been done usually adopted the “add women
and stir” approach. In these studies, the experiences of women migrants were often neglected,
and women were assumed to have the same reasons for migrating as men (Hondagneu-Sotelo
2000). Critics have attributed this lack of attention to two basic misconceptions: immigrant
women are deemed as passive followers of the male dominant migration (Pedraza 1991) or they
came to reunite the family (Pessar 1984). In reality, there are many women who initiate
migration as an opportunity to change their fate, for better or worse. For example, many
divorced Asian women and those over age 30 marry men in the U.S. because mainland Chinese
men still have strong preferences for younger women who have never been married (Cao 1987;
Jankowiak 1989).
My research will examine divorce or separation patterns separately for men and women,
as marital dissolution is a gendered experience and has different implications for each gender
(Thompson and Walker 1989). Men, whether in developed countries (DCs) or less developed
countries (LDCs), are more likely to quickly remarry after divorce (Sweet and Bumpass 1987) and have fewer after-divorce adjustment issues than women (Amato 1994). This is mostly due to the fact that men in these countries generally enjoy higher incomes and there are fewer stigmas for them divorce (Amato 1994). Women, on the other hand, are more likely to face difficulties
after divorce. Poverty among female-headed households is becoming a serious reality in both
DCs and LDCs (United Nations 2004). Further, divorced women in LDCs are at the bottom of
the disadvantaged scale as they are highly stigmatized by society and sometimes even by their 8 own kin (Amato 1994). Based on some case studies in India, Amato found that divorced women are not only a disgrace for their family, but also present a financial burden as they usually move back to live with their parents after the divorce. Although some feminist theorists may applaud this new trend of increasing divorce rates in these LDCs as a symbol of female empowerment, others also worry about whether the changes are too quick and if people are becoming more individualistic as a result of economic changes and western influences (Yardley 2005).
1.5 Possible Policy Implications
Although divorce is a rare phenomenon in most developing countries, when it occurs, it has many social repercussions for both origin and destination nations. For example, for people in developing countries, possible implications of divorce include, on the micro level, an increasing level of spousal abuse around the time of marital dissolution (Allen 1990; Wilson and
Daly 1993), accentuated “feminization of poverty,” and elevated mental disorders and behavioral risks for children, especially children in a female-headed single household (Tinker 1990; Dong,
Wang, and Ollendick 2002). From a macro perspective, increasing divorce means more housing demands or even environmental issues, considering most of the people in LDCs are living in multi-generational households, and housing shortages are a reality (Zeng 1991; Zhou et al.
2001). Furthermore, divorce may have serious consequences on the elderly since they depend on daughters or daughters-in-law to take care of them in most developing countries (UNIFEM 1995;
Zeng 1991; Zhang and Goza 2006).
For immigrants, severed family bonds not only break the goal of economic maximization for immigrant household units, but also create an especially harsh strain on female immigrants in female-headed households, consequently draining public assistance (Borjas and Trejo 1991). 9
Grasmuck and Pessar documented high levels of marital dissolution among female Dominican immigrants and noted that “[t]here are great disadvantages associated with marital dissolution and female headedness” (1991: 156).
Better studies on family and marriage are crucial because they can help guide the making of more effective policies for both sending and receiving countries. For Chinese in China, studying the emerging upward trend of marital dissolution is crucial in dealing with the burdens of aging, a housing shortage, women’s issues, and social instabilities that China has to face in the new century. From the 1950 Marriage Law to the more recent relaxation of marriage and divorce registration regulations, marriage laws have shaped and reflected the ideological changes in modern China. The recent modifications of the 1980 Law reflect the desire and determination of the government to deal with the increasing trend of divorce due to extramarital affairs and the need to protect Chinese women who are in intermarriage with a foreign national. Unfortunately, this kind of study in China can be seen as a “luxury” because of poor data quality and lack of transparent access to the most recent Chinese data. From the U.S. perspective, understanding these issues from the angle of Chinese immigrants can help shape future policy-making. Thus, this research may inform policy makers on these issues and help clear up some misconceptions about model minorities and their always stable families as well as create a social safety net for these immigrant groups.
In addition to sociologists and family demographers, economists, historians, anthropologists, political scientists and feminist scholars have all taken an interest in examining the Chinese family. Studying divorce and family can truly be inter-disciplinary because the family, as a basic social unit, serves as an intermediate institution between nation, state, laws and individuals. China is going through enormous transitions at neck-breaking speed in all aspects, 10
and Chinese immigrants are becoming a more important source of immigration in the US, which
makes studying their family transitions interesting and worthwhile for policy development.
1.6 Summary of the Chapters
I organize my dissertation as follows: Chapters 2 and 3 review the literature related to the
topic of this dissertation, including the main theories on marital dissolution and other factors
which might affect marital dissolution in both the Chinese and American context. Chapter 4
outlines the data and statistical measures on which the analyses are based and provides an
overview of my analytic strategy. Chapters 5-7 describe the results. Specifically, chapter 5 evaluates the selection and abruption hypotheses by comparing the divorce rates of both home
and destination countries. Chapter 6 focuses on the straight-line assimilation and the segmented
assimilation hypotheses by testing differences in trajectories in divorce rates across generation
and time in the U.S. and considering whether there are variations in divorce rates depending on
one’s educational attainment. Chapter 7 analyzes the effects of interracial marriage on marital dissolution. Chapter 8 concludes with a summary of the major results, broader implications and limitations of the study, as well as suggestions for future research.
11
CHAPTER 2: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS
2.1 Introduction
To date, there is scant theory that specifically addresses marital dissolution among
Chinese, either in mainland China or among Chinese who have immigrated to the U.S.
Moreover, most existing Chinese family theories on marital stability are limited in that they are based on western theoretical models, such as the economic theory of marriage on the marriage market (Becker et al. 1977), marital quality theory from the social exchange theoretical perspective (Levinger 1976; Lewis and Spanier 1979) and the heterogamy hypothesis (Bitter
1986; Tzeng 1992).
Due to data limitations and the focus of this study being bi-national comparisons of marital dissolution patterns among Chinese and Chinese immigrants, only those theories that are directly relevant and verifiable will be included and discussed in details below. Thus, I begin by outlining possible theoretical explanations of changing divorce rates in China by first looking at feminist perspectives on this issue. Then I shift my focus to explanations of marital dissolution for Chinese immigrants in the US, first reviewing assimilation, selection and abruption hypotheses on marital dissolution, and later, familism and gender perspectives, which are perspectives that more specifically address marital behaviors among immigrants.
2.2 Feminist Perspectives
Of suitable perspectives or theories, the feminist models perhaps have been most frequently used to discuss marital dissolution patterns among Chinese in China. Many western scholars have recently used feminist theories because Communist China has given hope to many 12 feminist scholars by proclaiming its aspiration to build a gender-equal utopian society. Indeed, in 1949 immediately after the Communists came to power, the Chinese government banned many feudal marital practices such as child marriages and the use of concubines, outlawed prostitution, and encouraged women to pursue a career outside of marriage (Pimentel 2006).
Many critics, both inside and outside of China later viewed the purpose of this early effort by the
Chinese Communist party, including its enacting the very first law in the realm of Chinese family and marriage, i.e., the 1950 Marriage Law, was to destroy the foundation of the clan- based feudal society and reweave the social fabric by first setting women free (Meijer 1971).
With the 1950 Marriage Law, an unmarried person could choose a partner at his/her own will.
Additionally, rural women were given land property, and thus achieved economic independence for the first time in history. Feudal marriages, such as arranged and forced marriages, were allowed to be dissolved; widowed women and divorcees could freely remarry without worrying about losing their dowry to the ex-husband’s family (Conroy 1987). Urban Chinese women had the highest employment rate in the world until the late 1970s, and rural women in China had also been mobilized by the people’s communes2 in many collective agricultural productions (Bauer et al. 1992). However, considering China’s thousands of years of feudal history, the sudden shift from a semi-colonial, semi-feudal peasant society into a socialist one did not bring about gender- equal utopian society that many hoped it would and the change for women was negligible within the households.
2 People’s commune (2007), Chinese (Pinyin) renmin gongshe refers to a type of large rural organization introduced in China in 1958. Communes began as amalgamations of collective farms; in contrast to the collectives, which had been engaged exclusively in agricultural activities, the communes were to become multipurpose organizations for the direction of local government and the management of all economic and social activity. Each commune was organized into progressively larger units: production teams, production brigades, and the commune itself. People’s communes, the largest collective units, existed in the relatively less-structured rural China above production brigades and production teams during the period of 1958 to 1982-85 (Wang 1998). 13
Gradually, some feminist scholars realized that the public proclamations and the rhetoric
of Communist China about building a gender-equal utopian society were at odds with what was
happening within the Chinese households. For example, one of the criticisms was that the
communist party was successful in encouraging women to participate in the labor force outside the home but not so in encouraging men to share housework within the households (Zhang
2006). According to Zhang (2006), marital conflicts result from different role expectations and power distribution in gender-reconstruction between the two genders in China. On one hand,
Chinese women are educated to be equal with men and take any job outside of home. On the other hand, Chinese men still expect wives to do all the housework at home (Zhang 2006). In
reality, urban Chinese women earn only about seventy five percent of what men earn for similar
jobs (Sun 1991). Even after the Communist take-over, a wife’s main purpose was still to give
birth to a male heir, and women remained subject to repudiation if they failed to carry out this
task (Verschuur-Basse 1996). For many women in China, one of the common ways to express
their frustration and finally protest their unhappy marriages was to commit suicide (Verschuur-
Basse 1996; Diamant 2000).
Eventually, many western feminists became disappointed with China’s Communist Party
and their emancipation of women, especially for rural women (Johnson, 1983; Wolf 1985;
Stacey 1983). Because the Chinese communist party has long adopted the rigid Hukou policy3
which divided China into rural and urban areas and adopted strategies of sacrificing the countryside in exchange for the economy for the cities, rural women in China enjoy few opportunities for education or advancement (Zhang and Goza 2006). Compared to urban
3 Hukou (2007) refers to residency permits (household registration) issued in mainland China (by the People's Republic of China). A household registration record officially identifies a person as a resident of an area and includes identifying information such the name of the person, date of birth, the names of parents, and name of spouse, if married. 14 women, rural women have few alternatives to staying in bad marriages because they lack a danwei4 or “work unit” or women’s association to go for help if they are unhappy in their marriages.
Diamant (2000), however, takes a different perspective about peasant divorce patterns, challenging the “conventional wisdom” of feminist scholars who faulted the retreat of the communist government’s devotion to women’s issues. From analysis of the historical files,
Diamant (2000) concluded that rural women were indeed assertive in struggling for their rights.
At the center of Diamant’s debate is the issue of whether divorce is a possibility for rural women in China. On the one hand, many scholars of family change in China reached the position that marital dissolution in China is costly for rural women as they are usually tightly embedded in the families, lineages, and community and not as mobilized as an individual in the urban China.
Anthropologists Potter and Potter concluded that women in the new China, as in the old society,
“literally had nowhere to go after divorce . . . In spite of the fact that the right [to divorce] existed in theory, the social structure makes it a practical impossibility” (1989: 263). On the other hand, Diamant (2000) concluded that going back to their natal home, though not a permanent refuge, was a feasible solution for young divorced women in either in rural or urban
China. Judd (1989) also found supporting evidence among rural women in Shandong province of China and concluded that marriage or childbearing did not necessarily break a married daughter’s ties with their natal parents.
4 “Loosely, danwei can refer to any office, enterprise, or agency employing personnel. More typically, however, it refers to state-owned factories, especially in urban areas” (Solinger 1995:179). 15
2.3 Assimilation, Selection and Abruption Hypothesis
Of the available perspectives or theories on marital dissolution among Chinese immigrants in the US, assimilation theory attracts the attention of most demographers. However, other than assimilation effects, other factors, including selection and abruption effects may also warrant attention.
Assimilation theory was first developed by Robert Park and Ernest Burgess from the
Chicago School. Park and Burgess (1921) focused on assimilation mainly by studying race relations in the U.S. during the 1920s. At that time most immigrants were from Europe, and the
U.S. as a nation of immigrants was gaining power in the world. According to Park and Burgess
(1921), there are four major stages that each racial and ethnic group will go through when they come into contact with each other: competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation in the end. The race relations cycle depicted by Park and Burgess (1921), in which dissimilar people and groups form a common culture, was perceived as an irreversible and progressive cycle.
Later, Milton Gordon delineated different types of assimilation for empirical research and testing. Gordon (1964) assumed that Eurocentric culture was the core culture and argued that for other minority groups to fully assimilate into a White-dominant society, it was necessary for structural assimilation to occur: first through entrance into the institutions and organizations of society, then through primary contacts with members of the host society. Gordon (1964) believed that once structural assimilation occurred, all other forms of assimilation would naturally follow.
Therefore, according to Gordon’s assimilation theory, prevalent, non-stigmatized interracial marriage indicates an important stage of eventual assimilation for the immigrant group and also signifies reduced social distance between groups. 16
Other than the classical straight-line assimilation theory, some competing new versions of assimilation theory also warrant attention. According to the classical straight-line assimilation theory, generation and length of stay in the U.S. are the key forces behind assimilation, with each generation becoming more assimilated than the previous one. However, with a greater influx of immigrants from non-European countries, scholars began noticing downward intergenerational mobility among the second and third immigrant generations as indicated by school performance, occupational status, and high rates of single parenthood (Landale and Oropesa 1995). Using the
National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add-Health) data and other data sources,
Rumbaut (1997) concluded that there is an overwhelming pattern of intergenerational regression among different generations of immigrant youths. First-generation immigrant youths enjoy much better school performance, physical health profiles, and are much less likely to engage in risk behaviors under the protection of the ethnic community while the third generation immigrant youths are most likely to live with only one parent. Dey and Lucas (2006) reported that both
US-born Asian and Hispanic adults are more likely to be obese and have more mental health problems than their foreign-born counterparts. The "second generation decline" or the “bumpy line” hypothesis by Gans (1992) speculates that some children of the new immigrants will not follow a pattern similar to earlier immigrants. These children may end up doing worse than their parents’ generation and will not escape the poverty cycle because of poor inner city schools and economic restructuring (Gans 1992).
The segmented assimilation hypothesis, which predicts the possibility of divergent assimilation outcomes for immigrants and their children, provides a lens to help us understand the diversity in adaptation patterns of recent immigrants and their children in the U.S. According to segmented assimilation theory (Portes and Zhou, 1993), many labor migrants, with Mexicans 17
as the preeminent example, occupy lower status positions in the stratification hierarchy, while
high-skilled immigrants (e.g., some Asian groups and Russian Jews), experience rapid social mobility. The segmented-assimilation hypothesis posits that “adaptation is contingent on geographical location, social class of the family of origin, race and place of birth” (Hirschman
2001:319). Zhou (1997) further clarifies that race and racial discrimination are major hurdles for
the upward mobility of immigrant children, especially those with darker skin. However,
empirical data have yet to bear on this hypothesis for Chinese immigrants. This dissertation uses
segmented assimilation theory to understand divorce among mainland Chinese and Chinese immigrants in the U.S. Generational status and years of stay in the U.S. are determinants of a
wide variety of social outcomes for immigrants, although most previous work emphasizes
Asians’ educational progress (Hirschman 2001:318). Thus, this dissertation sheds light on an
understudied outcome, marital dissolution rates, among Chinese immigrants and contributes to
theory development in this area.
Another hypothesis for studying immigrant marital dissolution involves a selection effect
associated with international migration. Compared to those who remain in the home country,
immigrants may be younger and better educated, and they may be more comfortable with risk-
taking, more receptive to non-traditional ideas, and more likely to see change as desirable
(Singley and Landale 1998). Thus, Chinese immigrants may be more prone to getting a divorce
and therefore show different divorce patterns than the Chinese who remain in China.
Other than assimilation and selection effects, the abruption hypothesis (Singley and
Landale 1998) focuses on new arrivals and does not necessarily conflict with the classical or
segmented assimilation. It emphasizes that the low marital dissolution rates among the recent
arrivals may stem from their survival strategy to cope with the new environment. When 18 immigrants first arrive, the U.S. environment can be threatening, isolating, difficult for making friends or building networks, especially for female immigrants with limited English skills or no legal status. Furthermore, the recent arrivals may lack social support and other means to cope with the difficulties. As a result, married couples may heavily depend on each other (Parrado and Flippen 2005). Another disruptive aspect specific to new immigrants may be that their lives involve constantly changing employment, locations, housing, and sometimes the shift of gender roles between husband and wife, all of which evidently put strains on a marriage and family cohesion (Zayas and Palleja 1988). At the initial stage of immigration, family conflicts may be suppressed because of economic instability, which is a more urgent issue as compared to marital inconsonance. Therefore, according to this hypothesis, immigrants who have recently arrived may be more keen on embracing old country traditions, which in turn, accentuate familism patterns such as unusual extended household living arrangements (Glick, Bean and Van Hook
1997), reinforced gender inequality patterns in the household level (Zhou 1992), and possibly low marital dissolution rates.
2.4 Familism, Gender Perspectives on Marital Dissolution among Immigrants
Many scholars emphasize the importance of family in migration research (Massey 1987;
Landale 1997). Specifically, more attention has been paid to how marriage and family ties shape immigration flows and diversify immigrant families. Marriage is an important type of human capital, and immigrants are more likely to be poor if they are not in an intact family (Lichter and
Landale 1995). Immigration policies prioritize immediate family reunification and have sustained migration flows during the last forty years (Fix and Zimmerman 1997), reinforcing the role of the family in migration research (Landale 1997). Recent immigrants are oftentimes 19 described as “under the influence of stronger family ties, social controls, and traditional values associated with their cultural heritage” (Portes and Rumbaut 1996: 181).
However, scholars from the structural functionalist school see population mobility as a variable in family breakup because rapid social changes weaken normative consensus among members of the community while weakening of traditional values increases individualism
(Durkheim 1987 [1951]; Merton 1964). Despite the difficulties and strains put on immigrant families due to the migration process, immigrant families are perceived to be relatively more stable than native families (Frisbie, Opitz and Bean 1987).
Familism, an indistinct umbrella term, has been used to explain the importance of family in terms of lower marital dissolution rates and stronger family ties when other proximity determinants have failed to explain the differentials between natives and recent immigrants
(Wildsmith 2000). Familism has been described as a social norm or a form of social organization, social control; other times, it has been used as a theory of cultural orientation.
Freeman and Showel (1952) discussed that the U.S. divorce laws clearly had familistic orientations with emphasis on the family as a unit rather than on the individuals. Freeman and
Showel documented the trend of increasing individualism and decreasing familism in the 1950s in the U.S. by testing several hypotheses on familistic attitudes (e.g., family first and individual second) and divorce. According to Freeman and Showel (1952), people who are religious or people who are better-educated tend to have a “familistic” attitude when considering divorce.
Moreover, women tend to be more “familistic” than males. However, neither age, mobility, marital status, nor urban/rural locality seems to matter (Freeman and Showel 1952).
Additionally, Kim (1990) specifically looked at the transformation of familism in many developing countries, especially developing countries under strong Confucian influences and are 20
currently going through many changes as a result of industrialization and modernization. Kim
traced the root of familism in South Korea to feudal peasant society where large cooperative
extended family networks were needed because of the intensive labor demand. Each family
functioned as a mini-community with the multigenerational extended family living and working
together, worshipping the same ancestral home, sharing the same blood lineage and functioning
as basic social units (Kim 1990). However, as many scholars have pointed out, familism is not a
static term (Buriel and De Ment 1997). Similarly, Kim (1990) also concluded that traditional
familism characterized by “community oriented cooperative individual behavior” has been
replaced by the modern amoral familism characterized by “family oriented competitive
individual behavior” (1990: 420) to capture the impact of increasing individualism on the family.
Many scholars (Sabogal et al. 1987; Rodriguez and Kosloski 1998; Steidel and Contreras
2003) have pointed out that familism is a multidimensional construct and includes several
aspects such as structural (e.g., extended living arrangements), attitudinal (normative aspects of obligation and responsibilities between the family members) and behavioral aspects (activities involving familial support and tie-strengthening). Among these dimensions of familism, the attitudinal aspect is especially difficult to measure (Steidel and Contreras 2003). Thus, due to the lack of data and attention from mainstream demographic research, the relationship between familism and acculturation has largely been inconclusive. Despite these obstacles, several small scale studies on Hispanics have concluded that overall familism is negatively related to acculturation and familial support was retained regardless of length of residence in the U.S. or number of immigrant generations (Sabogal et al. 1987; Steidel and Contreras 2003).
With familism in mind, many immigration theories describe the immigration process as a utility-maximizing, risk-minimizing process with an altruistic male as the head making most 21
important decisions for everyone in the family (Massey, Arango, Hugo, Kouaouci, Pellegrino,
and Taylor 1993). However, immigration is also a gendered process. Immigrant men and
women bring in different motivations and expectations and thus get asymmetrical returns and
experience different speeds in the acculturation process. Migration, as a process, empowers
women and disfranchises some of the male patriarchal privileges that male immigrants enjoy in
their home country.
Among immigrants to the US, men usually feel a greater loss of status as compared to
immigrant women from the same country of origin (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994). Women usually
gain power in the household due to their elevated economic status (Jones-Correa 1998).
However, the husbands oftentimes try to hold on to the old patriarchal values which are still prevailing in their countries of origin, sometimes even resorting to physical abuse (Chin 1994;
Menjívar and Salcido 2002). Such power imbalances have been documented as a major cause of marital dissolution among the Korean immigrant household where, unlike in South Korea, most
Korean immigrant women in the U.S. work, usually long hours, and their husband’s frustration over loss of control leads to elevated marital conflicts and instability (Min 2001). Min (2001) also concluded that the relationship between the role reversal and marital instability should be paid special attention when studying immigrant families, considering the fact that most new immigrants are from LDCs with patriarchal baggage and the new immigrant women, instead of staying at home, usually participate in the labor force.
However, other immigration scholars argue that other factors such as class, race or type of occupation may supersede gender, exacerbating a woman’s status in some cases (Parrado and
Flippen 2005). For example, Zhou’s (1992) study on Chinese women in New York City showed that many women sacrificed their equal rights within the household for the benefit of the whole 22
family. Studies on Vietnamese women revealed similar patterns of reinforced gender roles in
immigrant households (Kibria 1993). This is also true for Mexican immigrants as reported by immigration scholars Parrado and Flippen (2005):
The results show that in areas such as the division of labor within the household,
relationship control, sexual negotiation, and symbolic differentiation, Mexican women in
the United States exhibit higher compliance with traditional gender arrangements than
their peers in Mexico. (p. 627)
Depending on race, class and human capital these immigrant women bring into the U.S., they may behave differently when trapped in a patriarchal marriage in a strange land. For example, some may display accentuated traditional gender ideology and feel they have to sacrifice their own happiness in order to maximize the family economics. Other immigrant women with higher education or well-paid stable jobs, on the other hand, may compare themselves to native women and demand more equality from their marriage and have the option to leave if their husbands fail to meet their expectations. 23
CHAPTER 3: PRIOR WORK ON MARITAL DISSOLUTION IN SINO-US CONTEXT
3.1 Introduction
I start this chapter by reviewing the research literature on marital dissolution in the
Chinese and U.S. contexts. I then examine common marital dissolution predictors for Chinese marriages and discuss issues pertaining to remarriage and extramarital affairs in China. Next, I shift my focus to Chinese immigrants, reviewing prior work on marriage and divorce or
separation among Chinese immigrants first, followed by an examination of the stability of
Chinese interracial marriage.
3.2 Marital Dissolution in Chinese Context
Marriage is almost universal in China (Coale 1984; Zeng, Vaupel and Yashin 1985; Wolf
1985; Diamant 2000). More than 99.5 percent of Chinese women get married before the age of
35 (Zeng 1991). From a functional perspective, Wolf (1985) attributed the universality of
marriage in contemporary China to the reproduction needs, the potential to strengthen the family
status by creating new business and political alliances through ties of marriage, the needs of free
labor, and the tradition of taking care of aging parents.
Furthermore, marriage in China is relatively more stable than in the West, though there
has been an upward trend of marital dissolution in recent years (Platt 1988; Xu and Ye 2002).
Based on the life table analysis by Zeng (1991), the proportion of currently divorced Chinese is
below 1 percent for the entire marriageable population of all ages. Among the ever-married
(people married at least once), about 5 percent have experienced marital dissolution at least once. 24
With recent economic development and loosening of marriage and divorce stipulations, the marital dissolution rates have dramatically increased in China. According to a report released by the Beijing Bureau of Civil Affairs, “one out of every four marriages in the city ends in divorce, with the highest rates found among the highly educated and those working in arts and communication fields” (Diamand 2000:402). The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences surveyed a non-random sample of 6000 respondents in Shanghai which showed that over 40 percent had thought about divorce, but did not proceed mostly due to housing shortages and concerns about the child (Xu and Ye 1999). According to a recent newspaper report by China
Daily, 27,374 couples or 75 couples per day in Shanghai ended their marriage in the year of 2004 alone (Anon. 2005).
Based on many newly available archival resources, Diamant (2000) emphasized how the
Chinese government tried to shape family structure, most importantly through the 1950 Marriage
Law and the 1980 Marriage Law. As I mentioned in Chapter 2, the 1950 law abolished arranged marriages and purchase of brides and granted women equal right to divorce. Therefore, the tenet of the 1950 law was to emancipate women from feudal arranged marriages by granting them equal right to divorce, guaranteeing equitable property settlements after divorce and requiring mediation before granting a divorce. However, most Chinese saw marriage laws as the state’s attempt to interfere with individual families and this was partially due to the fact that the laws were oftentimes poorly enforced by incapable local officials who were not very educated themselves (Diamant 2000). Some unintended consequences of the 1950 Marriage Law included some newly promoted officials abandoning their rural wives for city women; some women used marriage and divorce to bargain for more material goods; and some poor men were not able to marry or hold onto their marriage after the end of the old match-making system. Most of the 25
divorce cases were initiated by women (Diamant 2000). Peasant and suburban women wanted to
marry city workers because city life is viewed as colorful and not as harsh or boring as life in the
countryside (Diamant 2000). Figure 3.1 clearly shows a peak in divorce rates5 after passage of the 1950 Marriage Law. As shown in Figure 3.1, even though the crude divorce rates have accelerated in recent years in China, the extremely high divorce rates in the mid-1950s are still much higher.
Figure 3.1 Crude Divorce Rate in China between 1950-2005.
2.50
Crude Divorce Rate=divorced couples/total population 2.00 ‰
1.50
1.00 Crude Divorce RateCrude
0.50
0.00 1950 1954 1979 1983 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 Year Sources: National Bureau of Statistics, P.R.China,China Statistical Yearbooks.
5 Divorce rate here is the crude divorce rate, defined as the number of divorces per 1, 000 people in a given year. The number used for this figure has been halved to reflect a recent discovery of the mistakes by the China National Bureau of Statistics (CNBS) which for years, used the total number of divorced persons instead of the divorced couples for calculating the crude divorce rates in China. Using the divorced couples is the international standard of calculating such rates.
26
As pointed out by many, the low divorce rates in the 1960s and 1970s in China were mostly due to the difficulty of obtaining a divorce in the chaotic “Cultural Revolution” era, during which divorces had been strongly discouraged and mediated by the cadres from the work unit or city neighborhood committee or the production team in the village (Zeng and Wu 2000).
Focusing on controlling the size of the Chinese population, the 1980 Marriage Law raised the legal age of marriages for both men (from 20 to 22) and women (from 18 to 20) and also loosened the legal restrictions on divorce (Zeng and Wu 2000). In 2001, China National
People’s Congress passed several modifications to the 1980 Marriage Law, making extramarital affairs illegal, took more punitive action towards violators, and added more protection for women, senior citizens and children (Zhang 2002). China’s new marriage registration took effect in October of 2003 and it further simplified marriage and divorce procedures (Voice of
America 2003). As demonstrated by Figure 3.1, crude divorce rates dropped sharply after 1950, slowly climbed after 1979, and accelerated after the passing of the new marriage registration law in 2003.
Socioeconomic matching has always played an important role in China in determining who marries whom (Croll 1983; Diamant 2000). Before communism took power, most marriages were arranged by matchmakers in China. Romantic love was a new concept imported from the West in the early 1900s. However, the baggage of the past was so heavy that for most
Chinese, especially for Chinese of higher social class, individual happiness and compatibility were still not considered as important as family honor (Diamant 2000). Xu and Ye (1999) confirm that most Chinese marriages were not founded on the basis of romantic love, but as a result of responsibilities and obligations. During the Cultural Revolution era (1966-76), political class matching became particularly important. One way the communist state remolded family 27
structure in cities was by sorting families into good and bad classes. Cadres, soldiers, workers
and poor peasants were considered good classes and were encouraged to date and marry good
families. In contrast, bourgeoisie and intellectuals belonged to the bad classes and thus were not
desirable in the marriage market (Diamant 2000). Even though political matching strongly influenced people’s behaviors in the 1960s, Diamant (2000), however, pointed out that
socioeconomic concerns, urban or rural locality, sexual appeal and other factors were clearly
more important than political class even in those chaotic times (Diamant 2000).
As the dowry declined, disappearing in the 1980s, the Chinese began to emphasize the
“betrothal gift,” which is provided for the new couple by the groom’s side of the family (Croll
1983). The burden of paying for a bride in China is taxing and usually falls on the parents, which is especially difficult for the poor peasant families (Wolf 1985; Diamant 2000). In exchange, the wives are expected to perform: to give birth to a male heir to continue the family line, to do farm labor and domestic chores, and to take care of the husband, children and the in-
laws.
Similar to marriage, divorce is not a personal matter in China, but a family matter which
involves financial transactions, even after the 1950 Marriage Law (Diamant 2000). Kay Johnson
(1983) argues,
Divorce, threatened to disrupt the exchange of women upon which patrilineal families
and rural communities were based. When a woman got divorced, she was divorcing a
family as much as a husband and the family was threatened with the loss of its bride price
investment (p. 147).
Thus, divorce bears the social stigma because it involves economic exchanges between families,
and this is especially true for rural Chinese women. Compared to women in the cities, the ritual 28
of paying the bride side of family money or matrimony gifts are still more widely practiced in
rural China. If divorce happens, however, the husband sides of family can take back their investment. Thus, the bride’s side of the family usually does not encourage the divorce as they will lose all these material gifts.
3.3 Marital Dissolution in the U.S. Context
After a century-long rise in the divorce rates, the crude divorce rate in the U.S. leveled, or has remained fairly constant since 1980 (Goldstein 1999). This leveling can be explained by compositional factors, including:
(1) the aging of the baby boomers, which has increased the average duration of intact
marriages; (2) the increasing age at first marriage, which has lessened the number of very
young brides and grooms; (3) a possible end to the rise in remarriages, which historically
have had higher dissolution rates; and (4) the increase in cohabitation, which may have
siphoned away some of the couples most likely to divorce (Goldstein, 1999: 409).
The United States still has the highest marital dissolution rates in the world despite the leveling in recent years. As the “plateau” is most likely to continue, the children of baby boomers will face risks of marital dissolution similar to those of their parents (Goldstein 1999). In terms of predicting the marital dissolution for an individual, some common marital dissolution predictors include early age at marriage, the importance of age, religious or educational homogamy between the couple, premarital birth and conception, parental marital dissolution or previous union or marital status. All these marital dissolution risk factors have been thoroughly studied and well-established as time-invariant (Teachman 2002). Furthermore, the positive relationships between women’s labor force participation, economic autonomy and marital dissolution rates 29
have been well examined and confirmed (Ruggles 1997). Moreover, there is also some supporting evidence for the relationship between the waning economic opportunities for men and
their abilities to enter or sustain marriage, and this relationship is especially salient among
African American men (Oppenheimer 1994; Ruggles 1997).
3.4 Common Marital dissolution Risk-Factors for Chinese Marriages
Marital dissolution in China and the U.S. involves many similar but also different risk
factors. Common risk-factors like early age at marriage and heterogeneous marriage types,
including age and educational differences between couples, are often used to predict marital
instability in China. More recently, Chinese scholars have started to pay more attention to
marital quality and the presence of children as factors contributing to marital instability (Xu and
Ye 2002). As a developing country with peasants comprising the majority of the population,
patterns of marital dissolution in China are certainly unique.
Zeng and associates conducted a detailed study of divorce in China by combining several
relatively high-quality surveys such as the 1982 China’s 4th Census and the 1987 China Second
In-Depth Fertility Survey, in addition to collecting their own detailed data among 5000 divorced
couples from 9 counties in China. They found that the top five reasons for divorce in the 1980s included personality differences between the spouses (about 50 percent); conflicts within the household such as housework distribution, care-giving and relationships with the in-laws (about
15 percent); hasty marriages (about 10 percent); and extramarital affairs and inconsonance in sexual life (together about 10 percent). But as Zeng and associates conclude, most divorce cases involve a combination of different reasons. Just like in the US, early marriage for women is a significant predictor for marital dissolution (Zeng et al. 1993; Zeng et al. 1995). 30
For Chinese men and women, however, the most probable reason for marital dissolution differs with age. The 20-29 age group is most likely to divorce due to hasty marriages; the 30-39 age group is most likely to divorce due to extramarital affairs (Zeng et al. 1995). Among the divorced couples, the bigger the age gap, the more likely a divorce. For husbands who are 6+ years older than their wives (about 20 percent), they are more likely to divorce due to hasty marriage and conflicts within the household; for wives who are older than their husbands (about
10 percent), inconsonance in sexual life is a major reason for divorce. For couples who are of similar ages (about 50 percent), extramarital affairs is the major reason for divorce (Zeng et al.
1995). Furthermore, people with higher education are more likely to divorce because of
“character differences”, a blurry term which can mean almost anything, whereas people with lower education are more likely to divorce because of conflicts in the household (Zeng et al.
1995).
3.4a Educational Achievement and Occupation
Education has been found to be positively related to marital stability with high education related to lower likelihood of divorce or separation in the U.S. (Bumpass et al. 1991). The importance of education has been emphasized not only as it relates to the propensity of getting married, but also to the propensity of staying married, which consequently relates to or perpetuates many social inequalities in the U.S. (Ellwood and Jencks 2004; Hymowitz 2006).
According to Zeng and associates’ (1995) analysis of the 1987 China Second In-Depth
Fertility Survey, people with more education in general were more likely to seek a divorce in the
1980s. However, the relationship between education and divorce rates is U-shaped, with people holding college degrees and those with less than primary school education more likely to divorce than people of other medium-educational levels. Furthermore, within these U-shaped findings, 31 there are significant gender differences. Compared to their male counterparts, women with higher degrees are more likely (about 1.5 times) to divorce their husbands, and men with less than primary school education are much more likely (about 6-7 times) to divorce their wives compared to their female counterparts (Zeng et al. 1995). Analysis of the 1990 Chinese Census gave similar conclusions. These education and gender patterns may reflect the patriarchal nature of Chinese society, but also may reflect the fact that education empowers women and the more educated women are, the more likely they are to seek divorce as a solution for unhappy marriages (Zeng et al. 1995).
Zeng and associates (1995) draw similar conclusions in their examination of occupation.
Men of high occupational prestige (e.g., cadres, professionals) are less likely to divorce than men who work in service industries, farming, fishing, or other manual labor jobs. Women of low occupational prestige (e.g., worker, farmer), however, have the lowest divorce rates, followed by women of high prestige (e.g., cadres, professionals), while women who have medium occupational prestige (e.g., service industries, business) are most likely to get a divorce. Zeng and associates (1995) concluded that occupational differences in marital dissolution occur because of different concerns about divorce, different expectations about marriages, and different abilities in solving marital conflicts. For example, people of higher social status may worry about losing face, and women of the bottom social strata may lack alternatives after divorce.
Although the above findings on the relationships between women’s education with divorce rates and women’s occupational prestige with divorce rates may seem to be incongruous, it is difficult to evaluate them because parallel analyses with similar datasets are virtually nonexistent. Thus, some of the discrepancies in Zeng and associates’ research may be due to measurement issues, e.g. how to classify educational levels and occupational prestige. 32
3.4b Urban and Rural Differentials in Marital dissolution Rates
According to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, in 2001 the urban-rural
population ratio was 36:64, reflecting a 10 percent increase in the urban population since the
1990 census. In spite of rapid urbanization in some areas, China still largely remains a rural
country. In general, marital dissolution is more or less an urban phenomenon in most of the
developing countries as it is assumed that the legal and institutional systems are more complete
and accessible in cities (Diamant 2000). Based on 65 qualitative interviews with refugees who
fled to Hong Kong from China in the early 1970s, Parish and Whyte (1978) concluded that most
rural marriages are stable. According to Zeng (1991), the divorce rates are somewhat higher in
cities than in the countryside. Conroy (1987) discussed that rural China’s lower divorce rates
after 1950 were due to rural localities’ less susceptibility to social change and marriage remaining more family-involved rather than an individual matter in rural China.
Questioning the quality of Chinese survey data, Diamant (2000) looked at the impact of
state policies on remolding the family structure and how normal individuals in China interact
with the State in everyday life. He concluded that the urban/rural and class differentials in
divorce in China are time dependent. For the period between the 1950s and 1970s, Diamant
concludes that it was actually the peripheral urbanites and the peasants who actively pursued
divorce, and only in the reform era after Mao, have intellectuals and other urbanites started to lead the trend.
Diamant (2000) believed that Chinese peasants are unique as compared to peasants in
other countries due to historical reasons. Chinese peasants were the major force of the Chinese
revolution and many leaders in the communist party, who later staffed the new state
bureaucracies and wanted to demolish the old feudal ideologies completely, were from peasant 33 backgrounds. According to Diamant, “Only in China was the regime ideologically hostile to large cities and urban elites….Peasants radicalized by politics demand such change, including divorce (2000:325).” The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) supposedly represents the best interests of the workers and peasants and therefore the working classes are more likely to embrace the Marriage Law of 1950, including divorce and a complete break from their feudal marriages (Diamant 2000). Furthermore, the working classes in China are more pragmatic and economically motivated to use material gains as the basis for marriage. Not only do economic motivations build a shaky foundation for marriage, but they can also explain why the working classes are more eager to divorce and remarry when marriage fails (Diamant 2000). Diamante
(2000) further attributes this to rural upbringing, instead of the impact of urban modernity that makes this group distinct. More importantly, the working classes are less worried about losing face and thus more frank about matters of marriage and sexuality. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, do not like to display “dirty laundry” in full public view (Diamant 2000). However,
Diamant does not make it clear whether the peasant’s “rebellion of sexual culture,” has always been there, or was indeed a direct result of the state policy, specifically, the implementation of the new Marriage Law in 1950.
3.4c Duration of Marriage, Age at Marriage and Other Risk Factors
Understood from an economic perspective by many western scholars, longer duration of marriage is usually associated with decreasing rates of marital dissolution (Becker et al. 1977, among others). Older age at marriage decreases the likelihood of marital dissolution (Booth and
Edwards 1985; Martin and Bumpass 1989; Heaton 1991, among others). Bitter (1996), however, points out that the positive effect of late marriage may work only to certain extent, as such spouses can be inflexible and unable to reconcile their differences at relatively older ages. Age 34
difference between the couples has been found to be negatively related to marital stability
(Bumpass and Sweet 1972). However, others have found that the relationships between couple’s
age differences and marital stability may be indirect (Atkinson and Glass 1985).
Just like in the US, early marriage for women is a significant predictor for marital
dissolution (Zeng et al. 1993; Zeng et al. 1995). According to Zeng et al. (1995), the mean age
of divorce has been rising between the early 1980s and the early 1990s. The average age for
divorce increased from 31.2 to 33.2 for women and from 34.4 to 35.8 for men (Zeng et al. 1995).
Consequently, the average duration of marriage among the divorced couples rose from 6 years in
the early 1980s to 7.6 years in the early 1990s. Even though divorce rates increased for every
gender and age group during this period, the divorce rates for people between 30-54 years old
increased faster than all other age groups, even after taking the age structure of the population
into consideration (Zeng et al. 1995). Zeng et al. (1995) attributed these changes to economic
reforms and people’s more open attitudes toward divorce, especially among the couples married
for some time who may have children together.
The age gap between divorced couples shrank between 1980 and 1990, and Zeng et al.
(1995) attributed it to the increase of “hasty marriage” among similar age young couples. These
marriages in China are usually characterized by practical motivation to get married for the benefit of housing allocation or to obtain an urban residence permit without going through serious dating. Although age differences among the divorced couples are concentrated at 0-3 years, Zeng et al. (1995) concluded that those husbands who are 10 or more years older than their wives or 5 years or more younger than their wives have much higher odds of the marriage ending up in divorce. They attributed the higher propensities to divorce among these couples to 35 the economic motives for younger women to marry old rich men and the patriarchal prejudices about older women marrying younger men.
Based on China’s 1990 Census data, Zeng and associates (1995) also studied the regional differences in marital dissolution rates in China. China has five autonomous regions6 and minorities in these regions enjoy special rights like practicing their own religion and not having to observe the one-child policy. Compared to all other provinces and special districts, Xinjiang
Uyghur autonomous region had the highest marital dissolution rates in China in years 1980 and
2000, though it is also the only region in China which experienced a slight decrease in marital dissolution rates in the last 20 years (Xu and Ye 2002). On the other hand, Tibet had the lowest marital dissolution rates in China in 2000 (Xu and Ye 2002). Zeng and associates (1995) classified these two minority regions as outliers and attributed the extremely high and low marital dissolution rates to religious reasons. Islam is the main religion practiced in Xinjiang and
Tibetan Buddhism is widely practiced in Tibet. Islam is tolerant of marital dissolution and it is normal for men to have multiple wives in many parts of the Islam world; therefore, local
Xinjiang Islamic men might have used divorce to achieve the purpose of getting multiple wives
(Zeng et al. 1995). On the other hand, Tibetan Buddhism teaches people to seek harmony and peace within oneself and the surrounding world. Other than religion, scholars attribute the dramatically different marital dissolution patterns in these autonomous regions to their more isolated geographic location and lower degree of influence from central government laws and politics (Xu and Ye 2002). One empirical investigation in Xinjiang indicated that earlier age at
6 An autonomous region is the first-level administrative subdivision of China. Like the other Chinese provinces, an autonomous region has its own local government, but with more legislative rights. It is a minority entity and has a higher population of a particular minority ethnic group. There are five autonomous regions in China. They are the Tibetan people in Tibet, the Zhuang in Guangxi, the Uyghur in Xinjiang, the Mongols in Inner Mongolia and the Hui in Ningxia (Retrieved June 8, 2007, from Online Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_county).
36
marriage, prevalence of arranged marriage and a less stigmatizing local culture in regard to
divorce all contribute to the high marital dissolution rates in Xinjing (Xu and Ye 2002).
Moreover, Xu and Ye (2002) also cautioned scholars that the seemingly low marital dissolution rates in Tibet may be an artifact of the lack of a tight marriage registration system in that region.
3.4d Extra Marital Affairs & Remarriage in China
Since the revolutionary fervor of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese people have refocused on family and personal life. Thus, divorce and extramarital affairs are becoming popular topics in the Chinese media (Platt, 1999). Many Chinese believe that escalating divorce rates and increasing extramarital affairs are the most fundamental social changes in recent years. Contrary to universal disapproval of sexual infidelity according to the surveys on the general public in the
U.S. (Treas and Giesen 2000), Chinese media shows a more ambivalent, sympathetic attitude towards extramarital affairs by romanticizing them and thus helping to justifying people’s behavior, usually men’s (Farrer and Sun, 2003). This can be partially attributed to the fact that religious standards are much more delineated in the U.S. while more amorphous in China.
In the United States, extramarital affairs are one of the most common reasons that marriages dissolve (Honig and Hershatter 1988; Pimentel 2006). About 15 to 42 percent of recent divorces in America are dissolved due to infidelity; the discrepancy depends on who is telling the story, as “cheaters” might not attribute infidelity as the reason for the dissolution
(South and Lloyd 1995). According to a large nationally representative sample, 22-25 percent of married men compared to 11-15 percent of married women have strayed at least once during their married lives, and the percentages for older cohorts are even higher (Allen et al. 2005).
According to a report by the New York Times, 70 percent of the divorces in China were initiated 37
by women and the most common reason for divorce is the husband having an affair (Faison
1994).
As the economy booms, new modes of concubinage and extramarital affairs occur in
China. Unfortunately, many Chinese men regard such kinds of sexual practices as expressions of liberation/modernization (Honig and Hershatter 1988). For example, there is a well known
“mistress village” on the outskirts of Shenzhen, the southern boom city of China. Shenzhen borders Hong Kong and the village got the name because of the “tens of thousands of Hong
Kong businessmen and workers who make the regular pilgrimage across the border” (Williams
1999: 79). The Chinese media oftentimes calls the mistresses second wives (ernai), which means businessmen pay for separate housing and other material goods so as to own the
“exclusive rights” to their mistresses (Shen 2005). Hong Kong businessmen’s lifestyles are the kind of lives many Chinese men desire. As more and more inland Chinese men get rich, from the corrupted officials to other upstarts, the first thing many wealthy Chinese men want is a mistress whom they can show off to others as a status symbol and evidence of personal wealth
(Williams 1999). Williams (1999) explains that the contradiction between liberal westernized sexual ideas and old concubine traditions in Chinese men is because of the deep-rooted feudalist male-dominance mingled with the modern, imported ideology of commercialized sexuality, which yields a new version of sexual inequalities with some western flavors.
In terms of extramarital affairs and divorce, Chinese feminists have divergent opinions
(Eckholm 1998). Some believe that divorce should be harder to get and divorce laws should be more punitive towards men since, compared to their male partners, divorced women are more stigmatized and have a more difficult time remarrying, whereas others believe that the increasing divorce rates can be viewed as indicative of female empowerment (Eckholm 1998). Women, 38
especially the younger ones, are vehemently criticized, oftentimes by other women, as the main
causes of the extra marital affairs and as destroyers of the harmony of others’ families (Honig
and Hershatter 1988).
Remarriage is more common among divorced persons or widowers in China than in the
West (Zeng 1991). Before communism took over, widowed women were, at least in theory, not
allowed to remarry no matter how young they were when the husband died, though evidence
showed that some poor widowed and divorced women did remarry (Parish and Whyte 1987;
Verschuur-Basse 1996). Not surprisingly, such restrictions did not exist for men (Parish and
Whyte 1987; Verschuur-Basse 1996). After communism took over, however, remarriage for
women was more commonly practiced, but women remarry mostly due to pragmatic economic
reasons (Wolf 1985; Zeng 1991). Chinese, especially Chinese women, usually quickly remarry instead of spending a long time lingering as divorced persons or widows (Engel 1985; Zeng
1991; Dong et al. 2002). While some researchers believe that higher remarriage rates in China,
especially among Chinese women, are a reflection of worrying about the feudal ideas associated
with the stigma of divorce, as well as concerns about the well-being of children because women
usually get the custody of children after divorce (Dong et al. 2002); others attribute the high
remarriage rates in China to lack of economic independence and individualism as that found in
the West (Zeng 1991).
Though most family scholars agree that women initiate most of the divorce cases in
China (Parish and Whyte 1978; Xu and Ye 2002) and remarriage is common for both Chinese
men and women, no firm conclusion has been reached about why women initiate most of the
divorce in China and who has a harder time getting remarried in China. Some believe that the
reluctance of Chinese men to initiate divorce is due to their fear of loss of the bridal investment, 39 which usually is exorbitantly expensive (Liao and Heaton 1992). Others emphasize that women initiating divorce more often does not necessarily mean that women are more liberal or have an easier time of finding marriageable alternatives, but usually indicate that women are oftentimes the under-benefiting bitter victims in unhappy marriages (Xu and Ye 2002). Some scholars speculate that Chinese men have a harder time getting remarried than women (Parish and Whyte
1978; Platte 1988) and one piece of evidence for this speculation is that the total number of divorced men is 2-3 times of that of divorced women in most regions in China (Engel 1985; Xu and Ye 2002). As shown in Figure 3.2 based on data from the China 2000 Census, men in China are disproportionately more likely to stay divorced than Chinese women in every single age group. However, other evidence indicated that about 60-70 percent of women also have a hard time getting remarried due to the “marriage squeeze,” (i.e. the marriage market shrinks for women as they age, while the reverse is true for men) (Platte 1988). Furthermore, as women usually get the custody of children, they may have a harder time getting remarried or be forced to marry down (e.g., marry men who are older or less-educated) (Dong et al. 2002).
Thus, the disparate findings in difficulty of remarriage between the two genders call for a more comprehensive understanding which may take composite factors into consideration, such as age and socioeconomic status at divorce or widowhood, local sex ratio and remarriage culture, etc. For example, according to findings from American surveys, aging impedes remarriage for both genders (Thornton and Rodgers 1987). But this seems to be especially true among women in China. As shown in Figure 3.3, Chinese women are more likely to quickly remarry than
Chinese men at younger ages. But the trend reverses when women hit age 60 and older men in
China are much more likely to remarry than their female counterparts. Again, this seems to be a consequence of the marriage market rules in China in which women tend to marry someone 40
Figure 3.2 Proportions of Currently Divorced by Age Groups, 2000.
0.018 divorced Female 0.016 divorced Male
0.014
0.012
0.010
0.008
0.006
Proportions of Currently Divorced 0.004
0.002
0.000 15-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75-79 80+ Age Groups Source Data: China 2000.
Figure 3.3 Proportions of Currently Remarried by Age Groups, 2000.
0.060 remarried Female remarried Male 0.050
0.040
0.030
0.020 Proportions of Currently Remarried Currently of Proportions 0.010
0.000 15-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75-79 80+
Source Data: China 2000 Age Groups C 41
older, “better” than them in terms of economical conditions and educational level. Moreover,
remarriage among the elderly still bears many social stigmas in China and has been shown to be
disproportionately unstable, partially because of the interference of grown-up children (Platt
1988).
3.5 Marriage and Marital dissolution among Chinese Immigrants
Marriage and marital dissolution patterns among Chinese immigrants have clearly been
shaped by U.S. immigration policies. Due to discrimination against early Chinese immigrants
(e.g., 1882-1924 Chinese Exclusion Acts), the early Chinese immigrants, mostly manual laborers
from southern China, were concentrated in Chinatowns in a few urban locations and forced into small service businesses to minimize direct competition with White co-workers (Boyd 1971).
Early U.S. Chinese society was also characterized as a “bachelor society” and the sex ratio was
highly skewed in these Chinatowns (e.g., 529 Chinese men for every 100 Chinese women in
1920) (Boyd 1971). Yet, most of Chinese men there were married, usually through arranged
marriages with wives living in China (Zinzius 2004). The return rate among these early Chinese
immigrants was high (about 70 percent), which was another reason why Chinese immigrant men
avoided bringing their families to the U.S. during the earlier period of Chinese-U.S. immigration.
According to Zinzius (2004), a separated family was the dominant family form for Chinese
immigrants before and during the exclusion era. Far from perfect, the separated households
however managed to function well with clearly defined tasks as male migrants made and sent
money back home and the wife produced the male heir and ran the households by following the
husband’s rules across the ocean (Zinzius 2004). 42
The 1943 Repeal Act opened the door for Chinese immigrants and at that time, Chinese war veterans were also able to bring their families to the U.S. (Boyd 1971). Between 1945 and
1950, 5,132 Chinese wives were admitted to the U.S. as war brides (Zhao 2002). The 1952
Immigration and Nationality (McCarran-Walter) Act introduced the concept of selective immigration by giving preferences to skilled aliens, regardless of their country of origin (Boyd
1971). As a result, the sex ratio among the Chinese became more balanced and slowly, the
“bachelor society” has transformed into a “family society” (Zhao 2002). However, this transformation was not a smooth one. Right after the exclusion era when the door first opened to the Chinese wives, many Chinese husbands were reunited with their wives for the first time after a long separation (Zhao 2002). Due to dissonant assimilation, many husbands, usually
American-born Chinese or Chinese men who came to the U.S. at early ages, disliked their
“uncultured” rural backward wives who could not speak English or failed to cook them
American food; thus there was a surging marital crisis in the late 1940s and early 1950s among the Chinese communities and there were several reports of Chinese wives of being brutalized, killed by their husbands or reported as missing (Zhao 2002).
As can be surmised from the past experiences, immigration policy will probably continue to affect Chinese immigrants’ marital dissolution patterns. As more and more Chinese families become characterized as model minority families with dual-earners enjoying a middle class lifestyle, the rising divorce rates in China and already high divorce rates in the U.S. have made some family scholars wonder whether there will be an increasing trend of marital dissolution across generations among the Chinese immigrants (Zinzius 2004). My research on marital dissolution among Chinese immigrants will distinguish among various modes of entry into the
United States, and will focus particularly on students, “mail-order” brides, and those coming on 43 family visas. Asian students account for the majority (a little over half) of foreign students in the
U.S. and about 80 percent of the students from China and India plan to remain in the U.S. as compared to 37 percent for Mexican–born doctoral students (Johnson 1998). According to statistics from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (2006), the student population accounts for the largest source of legal immigrants from China in the last two decades. But interestingly, there has also been a reverse trend of return migration or an increase of transnational migrants who are profiting from taking advantages from both worlds by commuting back and forth between the two countries on a regular basis. There were an estimated 190,000 return migrants from abroad by the end of 2004, according to the Ministry of Education of
China. Many of these return migrants are Chinese who studied or worked in the U.S. and returned to China for better job or business opportunities (Wang 2005).
The other two types of modes of entry have special meanings for female immigrants from
China. One of the emerging trends is for divorced women, along with other desperate women in these LDCs (e.g., women who pass their best marriageable age in their home country) to seek a husband abroad, especially men in affluent countries. The foreign bride usually comes with a fiancé visa sponsored by their American partner. The total fiancé visas tripled from 10,023 in
1996 to 31,597 in 2002, with half of the foreign fiancés from Asia (Immigration and
Naturalization Service 1996, 2002 Yearbook). Most of the Asian brides are from the
Philippines, China and Vietnam. Many Western men prefer to have an Asian wife because many of these men assume Asian women are submissive and easy to control. Mail-order brides and dating services in both U.S. and China are booming. According to the statistics from the
Chinese Civil Affairs Bureau (Minzhengju), there were 4,000 marriages and 1,000 divorces registered in 2004 between non-Chinese citizens and Chinese citizens (Cao 2006). Meanwhile, 44
Chinese female representatives in China congressional meetings are busy talking about passing new laws to protect proper rights of Chinese women who marry overseas (Cao 2006).
Another major channel for immigrant women to enter the U.S. is through applying for spousal-type visas sponsored by their Chinese husbands who have secured their foothold in the
U.S. About 5,000 women from China arrive in the U.S. annually as brides (Chin 1994). Such marriages are usually characterized as hasty marriages, since these Chinese men in the U.S. feel pressured, especially from their parents, to get married (Chin 1994). The brides are usually lured by the “American dream” and the exciting life portrayed by Hollywood movies. Usually not matched by physical attractiveness, age or education, these couples generally soon find discord in their marital lives. However, for immigrants, survival is probably more important than marital quality, at least in the beginning. Similar to Mexican immigrants, Chinese male immigrants tend to be more traditional, while female immigrants are more open to western ideas (Chin 1994;
Pessar 1999). However, many immigrant women do not dare divorce their husbands due to the lack of social support, the language barrier and lack of marketable skills. Even worse, some are trapped in an abusive relationship (Chin 1994).
3.6 The Stability of Chinese Interracial Marriages
Interracial marriage has long been a topic of interest and controversy in U.S. history. The anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S. formally banned marriages between Whites and non-Whites for many years (Sollors 2000; Lee and Edmonston 2005; Lichter and Qian 2004). Since antimiscegenation laws were repealed in California in 1948, interracial marriage has increased dramatically, from less than 1 percent in 1970 among all married couples to more than 5 percent in 2000 (Lee and Edmonston 2005). Children living in such families have quadrupled from 45
900,000 to more than 3 million between 1970 and 2000 (Lee and Edmonston 2005). Such changes have been optimistically interpreted as indicating the fading of racial boundaries in U.S. society. With a high influx of non-White immigrants after the 1960s, the topic of interracial marriage has become even more important as it has been interpreted as an important indicator of immigrant structural assimilation (Gordon 1964). Thus on the macro-level, intermarriage is often used as an indicator of the strength of the group boundaries and it is frequently taken as a key indictor of assimilation for a certain group.
With a high influx of immigrants from non-European countries since 1965, people start wondering whether these groups can successfully assimilate into American society and one of the key signs indicating this are the high intermarriage rates between an immigrant group and
Whites. Studies on interracial marriages of different generations of Whites with European ancestry show accelerated rates of intermarriages among Whites and blurring of group boundaries (Bean and Stevens 2003). However, it remains unclear whether intermarriage signifies boundary crossing by individual innovators or the fading of group boundaries overall.
Boundary crossing occurs when individuals of one racial or ethnic group “cross-over” to join another (typically the majority) group by making accommodations in his/her lifestyle to fit in better with the majority group and breaking ties with his/her own ethnic group, often to the irritation or disdain of former co-ethnics. On the other hand, boundary fading may occur if ethnic distinctions and identities become optional for individuals, to be emphasized only during the holidays for example, but otherwise do not have meaningful impact on everyday decisions or life circumstances (Waters 1990).
One possible way to discern between these two interpretations is to examine the stability of interracial marriages. For intermarried couples, relatively high marital dissolution rates may 46
indicate stronger group boundaries (thus consistent with the idea that inter-racial marriage
signifies boundary crossing more than fading boundaries), but low/same marital dissolution rates as compared to the racially endogenous marriages may signify fading group boundaries. Thus, if the boundary between two racial or ethnic groups is fading in social significance at the macro level, then we would expect that the marital dissolution rates of intermarried couples from the two groups would be relatively similar to comparable endogenously-married couples. This idea is based on prior research suggesting that homogony, or great resemblance in socially significant physical and psychological traits among the couples, e.g., in age, education, race/ethnicity and religious identification, is associated with marital stability (Dean and Gurak 1978; Schwertfeger
1982; Tynes 1990; Jones 1996; Lehrer and Chiswick 1993; Bahr 1981). Couples who are dissimilar on any of these major traits are considered to bear higher risks of dissolution (Kalmijn
1998; Kalmijn et al. 2005). Another dominant theory explaining interracial marriage is the status exchange theory by Merton (1941) and Davis (1941). Both Merton (1941) and Davis (1941) argued that people try to maximize their gains through marriage. A highly educated minority or a minority of higher economic status sometimes marries the less educated or lower class White partner in exchange for his/her high social status (Merton 1941; Davis 1941). Other than being
in a mixed race marriage, interracial marriage, as a means of immigration, could also be used as
a tool by some immigrants to come to the U.S. (e.g., the green-card marriage), which greatly shattered the stability of this type of marriage.
Empirical research suggests that race/ethnicity is a good indicator for propensity for
marital dissolution. Sweezy and Tiefenthaler (1996) observe lower marital dissolution hazard
rates for people of Asian descent relative to other racial groups. Using Current Population
Survey (CPS) data from 1994 to 1998, Feliciano (2001) raised doubts about the eventual 47
loosening of group boundaries as depicted by the classical assimilation theory by examining
intermarriage patterns among immigrant groups across generations. Compared to African
Americans, Asians and Hispanics are more likely to intermarry, especially with the dominant
White group (Feliciano 2001). However, unlike earlier waves of immigrants from Europe, there
is no accelerated intermarriage between the dominant White group and the Asian and Hispanic
minority groups across generations, as envisioned by the assimilation theorists (Feliciano 2001).
The social interaction perspective theorizes that the size and geographic distribution of a group play an important part in the local pool of eligible marriage partners. Research based on this perspective predicts that the size of the group is inversely related to the probabilities of marrying
outside of one’s group, with Native Americans as a primary example (Lee and Edmonston 2005).
Among the immigrants, the size and the sex ratio of the immigrant streams matter. Groups with
a constant flow of migrants, who also tend to live close to each other geographically, are less likely to marry outside of their groups; the immigrant groups with an unbalanced sex ratio are more likely to marry people of other national origins (Pagnini and Morgan 1990).
Using 1990 U.S. Census data, Lee and Fernandez (1998) found that the overall out-
marriage rate for Asians has declined because of the sustained new streams of Asian immigrants.
Along the same line with the marriage pool idea, Lichter and Qian (2004) analyzed both 1990 and 2000 Census data and confirmed the slowdown of intermarriage among both Asian
Americans and Hispanics. Bean and Stevens (2003) particularly emphasize two types of interracial marriages that can be explained through the social interaction perspective. One type is the U.S. serviceman and their foreign brides, many of whom are from Japan, South Korea and other non-western regions (Bean and Stevens 2003). The other type is Internet brides or mail- order brides with different people meeting through virtual space with the help of modern 48 technology. Many of these foreign brides are from Russia, Asia and South American countries
(Bean and Stevens 2003).
49
CHAPTER 4: DATA AND METHODOLOGY
4.1 Data
I use five data sources to study family formation and dissolution among mainland
Chinese, Chinese immigrants and U.S. born Chinese Americans living in the U.S. I use two datasets on mainland Chinese including the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) and the
One Percent China 1990 Census7. The China 2000 Census is undoubtedly preferable to the 1990
Census, but unfortunately, individual micro-level data is unavailable at the moment for public
use8. I use three datasets on Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans living in the U.S.,
including the 1990 U.S. Census, the 2000 U.S. Census, and the Survey of Income and Program
Participation (SIPP). Together, these five data sources from two countries offer an opportunity
to critically assess the relevance of current immigration theory for marriage formation and
dissolution among Chinese populations.
4.1a Data from China
The CHNS is one of the few high-quality longitudinal studies on changes in post-reform
China. It includes several waves of data (1989, 1991, 1993, 1997, 2000 and 2004) detailing
information on marriage status for every member in the household and a separate survey of
marriage history for ever-married women under age 52 in approximately 3,500 households in
China. The study population is drawn from 9 provinces including Guangxi, Guizhou,
Heilongjiang, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Liaoning, and Shandong provinces. These
provinces are highlighted by the dark green regions in the map (see Figure 4.1). Guangxi and
7 The One Percent China 1990 Census data was made available by The China Archive of the Texas A&M University Libraries (http://chinaarchive.tamu.edu/portal/site/chinaarchive/). 8 Although individual micro-level data is unavailable at the moment for public use, published tables are available. 50
Guizhou provinces have some of the highest concentrations of minority populations in China.
Jiangsu, Liaoning and Shandong are three coastal provinces in China which enjoy faster
Figure 4.1 Map of Survey Regions in CHNS
*The darker shaded regions in the map above are the provinces in which the survey was conducted.
socioeconomic transformation than the other inland provinces. Thus, even though the sample is not nationally representative, it is “diverse with variation found in a wide-ranging set of factors
(income, employment, education and modernization) and other related health, nutritional and demographic measures” (CHNS Website 2006). Within these nine provinces, a combination of stratification and clustering surveying methodology was adopted to stratify the sample by income
(low, middle, and high). “[t]he provincial capital and a lower income city were selected when feasible. In two provinces, other large cities had to be selected. Villages and townships within 51
the counties and urban and suburban neighborhoods within the cities were selected randomly”
(CHNS Website 2006). The final CHNS analytical sample in this dissertation includes ever- married women ages 15-52 who were interviewed between1991 and 2004. Separate longitudinal files of different themes (e.g. on education, marriage history, etc.) have already been pooled together by the CHNS team, therefore I merged them together by key identifiers. The final
CHNS sample size is 5,515 and the proportion of ever-divorced in the sample is a little less than
1 percent among ever-married women or about 52 divorces during the course of the longitudinal study. The total number of cases included in the One Percent China 1990 Census is 80, 558.
4.1b Data from the U.S.
The SIPP, a complex longitudinal data source with rich information on immigrants, is a multistage-stratified sample of the U.S. civilian non-institutionalized population. The SIPP consists of a continuous series of national panels, with sample size ranging from approximately
14,000 to 36,700 interviewed households (US Census Bureau 2006). The SIPP collects both retrospective and prospective information and it usually follows people for 2.5-4 years. The
SIPP includes a core file and different topical modules. The modules include a variety of topics ranging from health and disability to child care and welfare history (US Census Bureau 2006).
Topical module 2 is extremely useful for demographers as it provides detailed information on the timing of typical events in an individual’s life such as marital dissolution and migration. The data used for this research are mainly prospective data, which followed couples over time during the SIPP panels until they divorced or separated, dropped out or were censored. In order to study marital dissolution patterns, topical module 2 is merged onto each panel separately. Then, six panels of the SIPP are pooled together to form a grand dataset. The pooled data from six panels of the SIPP (1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996 and 2001) are used to amass large samples for both 52
Asian and Chinese immigrants (there are over 600 Chinese immigrants captured in the pooled version). The analytical sample for the SIPP in this study includes interracial couples with at least one spouse of Asian or Chinese descent, and who were married for the first time at the beginning of each SIPP panel or during the on-going waves of each panel. Of the 2,610 Asian women, 94 divorced or separated during the study period. Of the 447 Chinese women, 13 divorced or separated. Although the SIPP is not ideal because it was not designed to study marriage cohorts over the life course, it provides a snapshot of marital stability among Chinese immigrants during a shorter but substantial time span (2.5-4 years).
Unfortunately, the SIPP does not permit the analysis of Chinese-origin US-born natives because it does not identify Chinese among the various racial and ethnic origins (the most detail provided is for Asians as a panethnic category). However, those born in China can be identified using the place-of-birth question, and this group in turn can be further subdivided according to year of arrival. Thus the SIPP analysis is confined to those born in China (or married to a
Chinese immigrant). This study is feasible because both CHNS and SIPP are longitudinal data and both include detailed marital histories, which are necessary for using event history modeling techniques. Unfortunately, neither IPUMS nor SIPP allows me to identify the 3rd+ generations.
The SIPP only allows me to examine the 1.0 and 1.5 generations.
The IPUMS is widely used to study sub-populations in the U.S. The universe from
which the IPUMS records are drawn is restricted to households/persons who received the long
form and the data are based strictly on the census long form questionnaire. For studying a sub-
group like the Chinese (a little less than one percent of the U.S. population), the IPUMS is
undoubtedly superior in terms of its sample size and overall reliability. Immigration scholars
tend to use the term “second generation” to describe immigrant children who are U.S. born and 53 further, children are considered as generation 2.5 if one of the parents is a US-born citizen
(Rumbaut 2004). However, it is not an easy task to capture the Chinese-origin population and one can get discrepant totals depending on different definitions used (i.e., whether Chinese are identified on the basis of place of birth, race, ancestry or language spoken at home). As described further below, my strategy is to count as Chinese those who identify as Chinese by any of the above criteria (race, ancestry, place of birth or language spoken at home). The analytical sample of the U.S. 1990 IPUMS consists 13, 018 individuals who are either Chinese immigrants or Chinese Americans of different generations (for additional information about this sample, see
Table 5.3).
4.1c Constructed Data from Both China and the U.S.
The Sino-US 1990 Censuses was constructed in the following three steps. First, the One
Percent China 1990 Census was combined by stacking all 31 separate datasets for each Chinese province and autonomous region. To reduce the sample to a manageable size, the second step was to extract one percent of randomly selected cases from the combined One Percent China data. The third step was then to extract Chinese from the one percent 1990 IPUMS. After these three steps, the 1990 Censuses from both China and U.S. were finally ready for pooling.
In short, the 1990 Chinese and U.S. Census files are pooled with different cases from both countries on the same variables. In contrast, the pooled CHNS and SIPP event history files are two separate longitudinal files with different panels of multiple years being pooled together.
The pooled origin and destination file (the 1990 Sino-US census) is advantageous methodologically for studying immigrants, especially for identifying selection effects (Singley and Landale 1998). The pooled longitudinal data files (CHNS and SIPP separately) made it 54 possible to study marital histories on the target population (either Chinese women or Chinese immigrants) with as many cases as possible.
4.2 Mode-of-entry Groups
The specific hypotheses I plan to test differentiate effects by mode-of-entry of Chinese immigrants. Different from a century ago, when the “coolies” from China came as contract laborers or indentured servants, the mode of entry from China to the U.S. has been greatly diversified. Using data from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service statistical yearbooks (1996 to 2003), Figure 4.2 shows different modes of entry for Chinese nationals who came to the U.S. in these years. Disregarding illegal immigrants, there are basically three major groups of Chinese who came to the U.S. between 1996 and 2003: Chinese students (with F-1 visas) and their spouses and children (with F-2 visas); temporary workers or people who came to the U.S. to perform professional services in a specialty occupation (with H1B visas) and their spouses and children (with H-4 visas); and mail-order brides or Chinese (mainly women) who came on the fiancée visa (US Immigration and Naturalization Service 2006). Thus, in this context, I am using the term “mail-order brides” to mean women who came on fiancée visas.
Obviously as shown in Figure 4.2, the student and technical professionals represent the largest groups of Chinese immigrants coming to the U.S. every year, and have dominated the Sino-US migration flows; this can also be seen as the phenomena of brain drain for China. The decline of this flow after 9/11 in 2001 is also evident by the downward slope in the figure. Unfortunately, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service statistics cannot accurately capture the undocumented Chinese immigrants even though they represent a steady stream of immigrant sources. Mail-order brides only account for a small proportion of the total number of Chinese 55
who come to the U.S. every year, but a larger proportion of them are on a faster track in
obtaining the green card every year, as shown in Figures 4.2 and 4.3.
Figure 4.2 Mode of Entry for Chinese Nationals to the U.S. by Year
120,000
100,000
80,000
60,000 Mail-order Bride
Spouse &children of Temp. workers 40,000 Number Admitted Number Temporary Workers (H1B Visa)
Spouse & children of Students (F-2 Visa)
20,000 Students (F-1 visa)
0 1996 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Year of Entry Data Sources: United States Department of Homeland Security (INS) Statistical Year Books 1996 to 2003.
Figure 4.3 shows the total number of green cards issued to the Chinese immigrants by
their mode of entry or the visa type they have before they change their status. A small
proportion of Chinese gained green card status from the periodical amnesty programs the U.S.
government has for undocumented immigrants. Another small proportion of Chinese who claim
to be political refugees9 sometimes can get their green card after being scrutinized by the U.S. immigration officials. Many students who stayed in the U.S. after graduation first change their
9 These political refugees tend to claim to be persecuted by the Chinese government either because of the government policies, such as the one child policy or their religious beliefs such as Falun Gong in recent years. 56
visa type from F-1 to H-1 before they can start applying for permanent residence. Therefore, the
largest proportions of Chinese obtaining a green card each year are still directly or indirectly from the student population or Chinese with high credentials from U.S. institutions.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to directly identify mode-of-entry in U.S. datasets. As a consequence, I am forced to develop proxies for mode-of-entry based on the characteristics of
Chinese immigrants, including educational attainment, date of marriage, and timing of immigration, which will be discussed in additional detail below.
Figure 4.3 Legal Permanent Resident Status Granted by Mode of Entry Among Chinese 25,000
Entry Without Inspection (EWIS)
20,000 Refugees
e Mail-order Bride Temporary Workers and Dependents 15,000 Students and Dependents
10,000 Number ofPeopl
5,000
0 1996 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 Year of Issuing Green Cards
Data Sources: United States Department of Homeland Security (INS) Statistical Year Books 1996 to 2003.
4.3 Hypotheses
The analyses conducted in this dissertation are guided by the following six hypotheses which have been derived from prior literature and theories regarding Chinese and marital 57
dissolution outlined in Chapter 2 and 3. The first hypothesis emerges from feminist theories on
divorce in China and some of the inconsistent findings of educational achievement on marital
dissolution.
Hypothesis 1: Education and marital dissolution rates in China will have a curvilinear
pattern for women: higher and lower educated women should have low marital dissolution rates
while average educated women should have high marital dissolution rates. I use Cox
Proportional Hazards modeling techniques to test this first hypothesis with the CHNS data.
Unfortunately, CHNS only collected marriage history data on women (not men) who were ever-
married. I examine the effect of education on the hazard of marital dissolution. Furthermore, I
examine the available Chinese Census data for married men and women ages 15 or over 10 in
separate models to see whether a similar pattern holds.
The second and third hypotheses suggest that generational patterns in marital dissolution
among immigrants and their descendents could be explained, in a great deal, by the selection
effect. This is because immigrants are indeed a selected group of people and the inherent traits
they are bearing oftentimes can explain the outcomes when compared to counterparts who
remain in their native countries.
Hypothesis 2 (Testing for Selection Hypothesis): Marital dissolution among mainland
Chinese will be less common compared to recent Chinese immigrants in the U.S. Moreover,
according to marital homogamy theory, controlling for demographic characteristics and divorce
risk factors (e.g., age, age at marriage and educational level) should reduce this gap. To test
this hypothesis, I first compare the descriptive statistics of marital dissolution between the
published tabulated 2000 Census data from China and 2000 IPUMS for Chinese living in the
10 15 years and over is the standard used by the National Bureau of Statistics of China when collecting census and other data on marital status 58
U.S. with similar divorce risk factors. I then analyze the pooled 1990 Sino-US Census file,
CHNS and SIPP event history files to estimate either the probability of being divorced or
separated or the hazard model of divorce or separation.
Sub-Hypothesis 2.1 (Testing for Selection Hypothesis among Chinese labor
immigrants): Marital dissolution rates among Chinese labor immigrants (proxied by those
with less than a high school education in the IPUMS) will be higher compared to
Fujianese who stay in mainland China.
Sub-Hypothesis 2.2 (Testing for Selection Hypothesis among the Chinese student
population who later take jobs in the US): Marital dissolution rates among both Chinese-
American and Chinese immigrant professionals in the US, captured by their high
educational attainments, will be higher than dissolution rates for people with similar
backgrounds in China (people who have a college education or above in mainland
China).
Sub-Hypothesis 2.3 (Testing for Selection Hypothesis among Chinese mail-order
brides): Marital dissolution rates among Chinese mail-order brides, proxied by their close
date of entry into the U.S. and date of marriage, will be higher than their counterparts in
China, who are usually women of similar age at marriage or socioeconomic status.
To test the specific hypotheses stated above, I examine the effects of place of residence
(in China, or more specifically in Fujian province and in other parts of China versus in the US) by education and mode of entry in the U.S. among Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans.
The pooled census sample is confined to ever-married men and women (15+) who were born in
China. Separate analyses are conducted by gender. 59
Hypothesis 3 (Testing for Abruption hypothesis): Controlling for major demographic
variables and common divorce risk factors (e.g., age, age at marriage and educational level),
marital dissolution rates among recent Chinese immigrants in the U.S. are lower compared to mainland Chinese and more settled Chinese immigrants as well. To test this idea, I conduct
statistical analyses that run parallel to those described above for Hypothesis 2, with the exception
that I also examine duration of residence among immigrants in addition to generational status
(i.e., breaking the U.S. immigrants into duration groupings such as 0-4, 5-9 and 10+ years in the
US).
Sub-Hypothesis 3.1 (Testing for Abruption Hypothesis among Chinese labor
immigrants): Recently-arrived Chinese labor immigrants have lower marital dissolution
rates as compared to people from the major immigrant sending counties in Fujian
province of mainland China as well as other Chinese immigrants. Though the causes for
the lower rates can not be measured directly, the decrease can possibly be attributed to
the inability to divorce because of their illegal status in the U.S. or their plan to quickly
make money and go home, thus paying less attention to the quality of their lives in the
U.S.
Sub-Hypothesis 3.2 (Testing for Abruption Hypothesis among Chinese student
population who later take jobs in the US): Chinese professionals (captured by their high
educational background from the IPUMS or SIPP), have lower marital dissolution rates
in the first several years in the U.S. compared to people of similar backgrounds in China
(people who have a college education or above) and other Chinese immigrants.
Sub-Hypothesis 3.3 (Testing for Abruption Hypothesis among Chinese mail-order
brides): Recently-arrived Chinese mail-order brides (captured by their close date of entry 60
into the U.S. and date of marriage from the SIPP), tend to have lower marital dissolution
rates as compared to other immigrants and Chinese women living in China as they have
to stay in a marriage for 2 to 3 years to obtain a green card.
The fourth and fifth hypotheses in this study concern the impacts of immigration-
destination countries and whether marital dissolution is related to immigrants being in the U.S.
over a long period of time or across generations.
Hypothesis 4 (Testing for Assimilation Hypothesis): Marital dissolution rates among
Chinese immigrants in the U.S. increase over the length of their stay and also across
generations. More specifically, marital dissolution rates increase the longer immigrants from
China stay in the U.S. Divorce rates for Chinese immigrants of second generation or above should closely resemble the native populations in the U.S. Both SIPP and IPUMS include questions on how many years the respondents have stayed in the U.S. and the generational status variable could also be recoded from the data. Therefore, to test this hypothesis, I analyze both the SIPP and the U.S. 2000 Census file to estimate either the probability of being divorced or separated over immigrant length of stay and also over generations. I examine the effects of generational status among U.S. residents of Chinese origin (including both immigrants and natives). The analytic sample is confined to ever-married men and women age 15+ who indicate
Chinese ethnicity by any indicator (i.e., race, ancestry, or place of birth). Separate analyses are conducted by gender.
Hypothesis 5 (Testing for Segmented Assimilation Hypothesis): Generational patterns in marital dissolution rates among the Chinese in the U.S. vary depending on educational level.
For example, marital dissolution rates among highly educated Chinese might be similar to upper middle class Americans and marital dissolution rates among the less-educated Chinese may bear 61
more resemblance to marital dissolution patterns of working class Americans. Again, the 2000
IPUMS is be used to test this hypothesis. I repeat the analysis described above for Hypothesis 4,
only now testing the interaction between education and generational status.
The last hypothesis concerns the instability of interracial marriages and the enduring
significance of race in the United States.
Hypothesis 6: Empirical research suggests that race and ethnicity are associated with the
propensity to divorce. However, it is unclear whether interracial marriages between Chinese and
Whites are less stable than Chinese endogamous marriages or whether stability varies by the
generational status of the immigrant group. I hypothesize that Chinese who are in an interracial
marriage are more likely to be in a less homogamous marriage (e.g., greater age, educational,
income and naturalization status differences between the spouses), and thus less stable than the
Chinese endogamous marriage. However, after controlling for these heterogeneous factors,
Chinese who are in an interracial marriage are not going to be more likely to divorce than
Chinese endogamous marriages. I test this idea using the SIPP. Six panels of SIPP (1990, 1991,
1992, 1993, 1996 and 2001) have been pooled together for studying marital dissolution patterns for Chinese immigrants who are in different types of marriages. I estimate Cox models of marital dissolution to examine the effects of mixed marriage (by type of mixed marriage), generational status, and the interaction between mixed marriage and duration of residence, citizenship and generational status. In these models, couple is the unit of analysis. Furthermore, the sample is confined to couples in which one or both members are of Chinese origin.
4.4 Key Variables
4.4a Dependent Measures 62
Marital Dissolution. Divorce/separation measures vary slightly across the datasets. For
some, the information is restricted to current marital status (i.e., being currently divorced or separated); for others, the probability or the hazard of getting a divorce or separation (whichever
comes first) is available. As described in the last chapter, the drawback of using the measure of
current marital status is that it does not capture divorce among remarried people. The percentage
currently divorced or separated will be lower for groups with higher rates of remarriage, all other
things equal (that is, even if all groups had identical divorce rates among first marriages).
Nevertheless, I am forced to use census data for many of the analyses (particularly to examine
generational differences) due to sample size limitations and lack of detail on immigration and
generational status in other data sources, and the census data do not include any information
concerning marital history or remarriage. For U.S. 1990 and 2000 census data, divorce or
separation information can be obtained from the current marital status question for people who
are between ages of 15 and 65. The marital status question usually includes six categories with
1= Married, Spouse Present, 2= Married, Spouse Absent, 3= Separated, 4= Divorced, 5=
Widowed, and 6= Never Married. For China 1990 Census data, only four categories are
available with 1= Never Married, 2= Married, 3= Widowed, 4= Divorced. The CHNS is
inconsistent in differentiating divorce from separation (in some waves both are identified, but in
other waves, only divorce is identified). Thus, for all analyses, the dependent variable is a
dichotomous measure where “1” indicates divorce or separation.
In the SIPP and CHNS, divorce/separation information can also be obtained from the 6-
category marital status question, but the SIPP and CHNS also include information on the
respondent’s marital history. Further, the SIPP follows people for a span of 2.5-4.0 years and
includes a periodically changing pool of participants; therefore it is possible to sketch the marital 63
history for an individual’s life for 2.5-4 years within the follow-up periods. Chinese immigrants’
marital history is captured by using the pooled data from six panels of the SIPP (1990, 1991,
1992, 1993, 1996 and 2001), including different Chinese cohorts. The CHNS follows one group
of individuals in China for a longer time period (1991 to 2004), making it possible to sketch a
marital history spanning a period of over 10 years.
4.4b Independent Variables for the Chinese Data
Age. In the CHNS, household interview dates are determined for the longitudinal file.
Age is generally calculated as “(Household Interview Date-Western DOB) / 365.25” (CHNS
Website 2006). Current age and age at first marriage11 are both needed for determining the duration of the first marriage.
Age at first Marriage. Previous findings suggest that age at first marriage, just like in the west, is a key determinant for predicting marital stability among Chinese. Early marriages tend to be formed without extensive dating and they also endure longer exposure to the risks of divorce in a life-course perspective.
Education. Educational level is measured by the respondents’ highest level of educational attainment. Education is coded into six categories where 0= None, 1= Primary
School, 2= Lower Middle School, 3= Upper Middle School, 4= Technical, Professional, or
Vocational Degree, 5= 3-4 Year College Degree and 6= Master Degree or more. These
educational categories are also coded as dummy variables as previous research suggests the
relationship between educational level and divorce rates may be curvilinear (Zeng et al. 1995).
Duration of Marriage. Duration of marriage is calculated by the following formula,
Duration of Marriage in Years= (Current Age-Age at Marriage). Many studies in the U.S. have
suggested that the relationship between duration of marriage and divorce is non-linear (Becker et
11 Only people in their first marriages are included for making more accurate comparisons. 64
al. 1977) and the median duration to divorce is seven years on a first marriage or when children of the couple are at their teen years (Waite and Lillard 1991). Studies of divorce among Chinese populations have yielded similar findings. For example, Judd (1989) found the peak years for divorce among Chinese couples occurred around year 5-6 of the marriage, regardless of whether there are children involved or not.
Children. Having children or not in the marriage is a dichotomous variable with having at least one child coded as “1” and no children coded as “0”. As many suggested, having at least one child in one’s marriage is a deterrent factor for divorce among Chinese (Dong et al. 2002).
Xu and Ye (2002) also believe having children or not is one of the most important predictors of marital instability in China. For the CHNS sample, the gender of the child is differentiated since prior research shows that some divorces occur in China because the wife did not bear a male heir for the family (Zeng et al. 2002).
Rural/Urban. As a developing country with a huge gap between urban and rural areas, rural or urban locality has been suggested by many to be important in studying marital dissolution pattern in China (Diamant 2000; Zeng et al. 1995). Rural and urban locality is decided by the respondent’s answer to the question of “To which type of household registration
(Hukou) do you belong?” The variable has been dichotomously coded as 1= Urban and
0=Rural. The Chinese Hukou system clearly divides Chinese society into “urban and rural
classes” (US Embassy in China 2002). The Hukou system was devised by the central
government to monitor population movement between rural and urban areas by assigning “every
Chinese citizen to a home district, outside of which they have few rights to welfare benefits,
medical care or schooling” (Hennock 2001). Economic development and the ongoing transition
from a traditional economy to a market economy have produced a more blurred rural-urban 65
boundary and therefore require greater flexibility of labor migration. Thus, this rigid Hukou
system, although relaxed in 1994, is outdated and unsuitable for China’s current economic
situation. In 2000, the urban-rural population ratio was 39:61, a 10 percent increase in the urban
population since only 1990 (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2001). Hence, in spite of
rapid urbanization in some areas, China remains a rural country.
Marriage Cohort. Couples who are marrying and dissolving during similar time periods
may share an array of characteristics, such as similar political and legal conditions in their
society, which could affect marital stability (Morgan and Rindfuss 1985; Thornton and Rodgers
1987; Canabal 1990). Thus, five time dummies (year 1991, 1993, 1997, 2000 and 2004),
signifying different time points over a 15 year-span, are included in the analysis of CHNS data.
4.4c Independent Variables for the U.S. Data
Similar independent variables are used for analyzing the U.S. data as well.
Age. The U.S. 2000 Census long form asked respondents “What is this person’s age and
what is this person’s date of birth?” and specifically the long form indicated that age should be
the respondent’s age as of April 1, 2000. Due to the longitudinal nature of the SIPP, age at the
first interview is used as the respondent’s age.
Age at first Marriage & Duration of Marriage. Both Age at first marriage and duration
of marriage are available in the SIPP, but not in the IPUMS.
Age Gap between Spouses. The age gap between spouses is obtained from calculating
the absolute difference of current age differences between husbands and wives in the SIPP. In
the IPUMS, age gap between the couple could not be calculated because partner’s age (and other partner information) is available only for married couples, not for the divorced persons, as is the 66
the case in most cross-sectional data. Therefore, the age gap between the spouses could be
controlled for only when analyzing the SIPP.
Education. In the IPUMS, educational attainment is coded into four categories with 1=
Less Than High School; 2= High School diploma; 3= Some College, where respondent has an
associate degree or some college experience; 4= College Degree or above. Similarly in the SIPP,
respondents’ education is coded with four categories with 1= Less than High School, 2= High
School, 3= Some College, and 4= College. In analyses of the pooled 1990 U.S. and Chinese
Censuses, educational attainment in the 1990 Census was also coded into separate dummy
variables to match the six-category coding convention in the China 1990 Census12. The reason
for using more detailed educational attainment categories (particularly at the lower end of the
educational distribution) in analyses of the Chinese data (and the pooled U.S.-Chinese census data) is that my preliminary analyses showed that educational attainments are more widely dispersed (with more people with less than secondary school in particular) in China than in the
U.S.
Education Gap between Spouses. The education gap between spouses is a dichotomously coded variable obtained from calculating whether there is a difference in highest degrees obtained for each partner in the SIPP.
Children. Like in the CHNS, whether couples having children or not is a dichotomously
coded variable in the SIPP.
Income. Income is the logarithm of personal (not couple) income at the first wave of the
SIPP panel as well as in the 2000 IPUMS. When respondents have a true 0 for their income, log
(income+1) was used instead of log (income).
12 In the 1 Percent China 1990 Census data, respondents’ education was coded with six categories with 1= No Education, 2= Primary School, 3= Junior Middle School, 4= Senior Middle School, 5= Technical, Vocational School, 6= College (including both 3 or 4 years) or above. 67
Nativity/Citizenship of the Couple. In the SIPP, both citizenship and nativity status of the couple could be examined. Thus, five types of couples could be distinguished with 1= both
spouses are foreign-born with at least one being non-citizen, 2= both spouses are U.S. citizen foreign-born, 3= one spouse is non-citizen, the other is native, 4= one spouse is naturalized
citizen, the other is native, and 5= both spouses are natives.
Intergenerational Change or Generation (GEN). As pointed out by many who studied
marital dissolution among immigrants, immigrant generational status is important in studying
immigrants’ cultural incorporation (Schoen and Cohen 1980; Bean, Berg and Van Hook 1996).
According to Rumbaut, the broadly defined second generation can be further delineated into four
generational cohorts: the 1.5 generation, the 1.75 generation, the 2.0 generation, and the 2.5
generation, “depending on whether their migration occurred during early childhood (ages 0-5),
middle childhood (6-12), or adolescence (in their teens)” (2004: 1167). Youths who arrived in
the U.S. between ages 6-12 are classified as the 1.5 generation. Youth who are labeled as the
1.75 generation came to the U.S. between ages 0-5 and they often speak perfect English without
an accent and most have very little memory about their birth country. These children usually
have learned their native language abroad, but most of them can “learn the ropes” pretty quickly.
The 2.0 generation is defined as children who are born in the U.S. with both parents are foreign-
born. Lastly, the 2.5 generation is defined as children who are born in the U.S. but with one US-
born parent and one foreign-born parent (Rumbaut 2004).
The 2000 U.S. Census, for the first time in the U.S. census history, permits respondents
to identify having one or more than one race. Data on multiple racial identifications can be used
as a proxy for being the child of a mixed marriage (i.e. 2.5 generations). Table 4.1 and 4.2
include descriptive statistics based on the U.S. 2000 IPUMS. As shown in Table 4.1, there are 68
125,235 respondents; a little less than one percent of the total U.S. population in the five percent
IPUMS sample reported themselves Chinese or having Chinese heritage. Among them, 85
percent are Chinese of different generations, 5 percent are Taiwanese, 3 percent are Chinese and
other Asians, 4 percent are White and Chinese and 3 percent are different combinations of
Chinese, Hawaiian and other races. Overall, approximately 5-8 percent of respondents are
children of mixed marriages between Chinese and other races. Table 4.2 shows the proportions
of population in each marital status by detailed race variables for the selected groups. Among
them, Blacks have the highest proportion of people who are divorced/separated. Similar to
Whites, Hawaiians are more likely to be divorced or separated, followed by Filipinos and
Japanese. Similar to Vietnamese, South Koreans, and Asian Indians, Chinese have relatively smaller proportions of people in their respective groups who are divorced or separated. Among
mixed marriages between Chinese and other races, Chinese/Hawaiian have the highest
proportion of people who are divorced/separated, followed by Chinese/Hawaiian/White,
Chinese/other races and Chinese/Black. In terms of proportions of people who are
divorced/separated, the Chinese/White population is comparable to the Chinese (single race)
population according to Table 4.2.
The U.S. 1990 and 2000 Census long form includes ancestry or ethnic origin questions
with space to write down two possible answers and also the question on “Where was this person
born?” followed by the citizenship question with a possible answer that if the person is foreign
born, whether he/she was born abroad of American parent or parents. Thus, in the IPUMS, it is
possible to distinguish first-generation Chinese (born in China and came to the U.S. as adults);
the 1.5 generation (born in China and came between ages 6 and 12); the 1.75 generation (born in
China and came before age 6) and the 2nd or higher generation (born in the U.S. and has Chinese 69
Table 4.1 Total Number and Proportions of Chinese in Census 2000 IPUMs 5% file. Detailed Race Frequency Proportion among Chinese 1 Proportion among U.S. population2 Chinese 106,255 0.85 0.0075 Taiwanese 5,662 0.05 0.0004 Chinese and Taiwanese 564 0.00 0.0000 Chinese and Japanese 1,110 0.01 0.0001 Chinese and Filipino 1,303 0.01 0.0001 Chinese and Vietnamese 1,637 0.01 0.0001 Chinese and Asian write-in 227 0.00 0.0000 White and Chinese 4,994 0.04 0.0004 Black and Chinese 528 0.00 0.0000 Chinese and Hawaiian 920 0.01 0.0001 Chinese and other race write-in 880 0.01 0.0001 White, Chinese, Hawaiian 1,155 0.01 0.0001 Total 125,235 1.00 0.0089 Source of Data: 2000 PUMs 5% file (Total Sample size N= 14,081,466). 1. percent among Chinese= each subcategory/total Chinese in the sample(125,235) 2. percent among U.S. population = each subcategory/total U.S. in the sample(14, 081, 466)
Table 4.2 Married Status (in Proportions) by Detailed Race Variables for Selected Groups, 2000.
Detailed Race Married1 Married2 Separated Divorced Widowed Never married/single
White 0.45 0.02 0.01 0.08 0.06 0.38 Black/Negro 0.23 0.04 0.04 0.08 0.06 0.56 Chinese 0.46 0.05 0.01 0.03 0.04 0.42 Japanese 0.50 0.03 0.01 0.06 0.07 0.34 Filipino 0.43 0.05 0.01 0.04 0.04 0.42 Asian Indian (Hindu 1920-1940) 0.48 0.04 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.43 Korean 0.45 0.03 0.01 0.04 0.03 0.44 Hawaiian 0.34 0.04 0.02 0.08 0.04 0.48 Vietnamese 0.38 0.04 0.01 0.03 0.03 0.50 Chinese and Other Asians 0.32 0.02 0.01 0.03 0.02 0.59 White and Chinese 0.16 0.02 0.01 0.03 0.01 0.78 White and Japanese 0.23 0.02 0.01 0.05 0.01 0.69 White and Filipino 0.18 0.01 0.01 0.03 0.01 0.75 Black and Chinese 0.25 0.04 0.02 0.05 0.02 0.61 Chinese and Hawaiian 0.46 0.03 0.01 0.09 0.07 0.35 Chinese and other race write-in 0.29 0.02 0.02 0.06 0.02 0.60 White, Chinese, Hawaiian 0.31 0.02 0.01 0.06 0.03 0.57 1Married, spouse present; 2 Married, Spouse absent. Source of Data: the Census 2000 5% PUMS. 70
ancestry). Among the 2nd+ generation, I further distinguish between those with mixed ancestry and those with only Chinese ancestry. With the SIPP, it is possible to identify first-generation
Chinese and the 1.5 and 1.75 generations with the following two questions: “In what state or
foreign country was ... born?” and “When did ... come to the United States to stay?” These
questions were asked for persons 15 years or older who have lived in a foreign country or who
are naturalized citizens of America. Unfortunately, 2nd or 3rd generation Chinese cannot be
identified in the SIPP because it did not ask respondents questions on their parents’ migration
history. Some of these categories are collapsed (e.g., 1.5 with 1.75) when there are too few cases
in some generational groups.
Intra-generational Change or Length of Residence in the U.S. This variable is the
number of years the foreign-born respondents have lived in the U.S. since they first came to stay.
The long forms of the 2000 and 1990 IPUMS include a question on year of immigration worded
as such: “When (which year) did this person come to live in the United States?” Moreover, both
SIPP and IPUMS have included questions on how many years the respondents have stayed in the
U.S. Duration of U.S. residence is obtained by subtracting the year of arrival (estimated as the mid-point of the year-of-arrival category) from current year. Duration of U.S. residence is then coded into a set of dummy variables for immigrants (0-4 years, 5-9 years, 10+ years).
Intermarriage. One of the main independent variables for testing Hypothesis 6 is the mixture of the couple’s race/ethnicity, as many have theorized interracial married couples are less stable. Because spouse characteristics (including race/ethnicity) are available for divorced/separated persons only in the SIPP data, I use the SIPP and not the IPUMS to test the hypothesis concerning interracial marriage. In the analysis, interracial marriages involving at least one Chinese spouse are captured with a dichotomously coded variable. Furthermore, using 71
race and ethnicity questions in the SIPP codebook, couples were matched and coded into six additional dummy variables to indicate if the couples are in a Chinese-Chinese marriage,
Chinese-White marriage, Chinese-Black marriage, Chinese-Hispanic marriage, Chinese-other
Asian marriage or in a marriage involving Chinese and multiple race ethnicity categories from
either spouse.
Mode of Entry. In analyses that seek to assess the degree of immigration-related
selection among Chinese immigrants, I distinguish among three mode-of-entry groups: 1) service
workers who closely resemble the earlier waves of Chinese who came to the U.S. as cheap
laborers, 2) students, scholars or professionals and their immediate family members, and 3)
women who came as mail-order brides. These three groups tend to originate from different
regions and social strata in China. The specific strategies for identifying mode-of-entry are
described below:
Labor Immigrants. Many Chinese who work in service sectors (e.g., Chinese restaurants
or garment factories) are undocumented immigrants and more than 80 percent of them come
from the Fujian province of China (Liang and Ye 2001). Undocumented immigrants from China
account for 5-10 percent of the total Chinese population in the U.S. and they usually possess
distinct traits such as risk-taking (Liang and Ye 2001). According to Liang and Ye (2001),
Fujianese are certainly not immigrating because of poverty. Fujian is not one of the poor
provinces in China; it is undergoing a rapid economic transition because of its locality as a
coastal province and long history of out-migration. The Fujianese are descendants of fishermen
and are accustomed to surviving under extremely difficult situations. However, in terms of
marriage and marital dissolution, undocumented Fujianese immigrants are similar to Fujianese
who remain in China and to Chinese living in other regions (Liang and Ye 2001). 72
Undocumented immigrants from Fujian are more likely to be married or single, rather than divorced or separated compared to Fujianese who never leave home (Liang and Ye 2001).
According to Liang and Ye (2001), most of the undocumented Fujianese are from eastern Fujian between the capital city Fujou and the coast. More specifically, they tend to migrate from a few major cities, including the cities of Fuzhou, Fuqing, Changle, Lianjiang, and Pingtan (Liang and
Ye 2001). These immigrants can be approximately identified in the various datasets by their relatively lower educational background (less than high school). In the 1990 Chinese Census, the population from which these types of immigrants originated is approximated by region
(Fujian Province) and low education (i.e., less than high school).
Mail-order brides. Mail-order brides are identified in the SIPP by examining immigrant women’s date of marriage relative to their date of immigration. Women who first came to the
U.S. and then married a US-born native or citizen within a year are treated here as mail order brides, although I acknowledge that this is merely a proxy for this category of immigrant, and that many of these women may have found their spouses through means other than on the internet or other similar type of match-making service. In order to better study respondents who were in a mail-order bride type of marriage, couple-level instead of individual-level data were created. Unfortunately, Chinese couples in which both partners were American-born could not be identified in the SIPP because the survey did not collect ancestry questions or questions about parents’ immigration history.
Students/Scholars/Professionals. Finally, those immigrating as students are operationalized as those with a college degree or more (and not identified as mail-order brides).
It is important to note that education, as an indicator of human capital, operates differently on divorce for men and women in China (Zeng et al. 1995; Xu and Ye 2002). 73
4.4d Variable Considered but not included
Remarriage. Remarriage is prevalent among the divorcees in China (Zeng 1991).
However, as an incomplete institution, people who are remarried are also more likely to divorce again (Cherlin 1978). Unfortunately, the question about remarriage was asked inconsistently across different waves of CHNS. Among the available data, only the 1993 Survey of Ever-
Married Women under age 52 included the question about remarriage. Therefore, this variable is not included in my analyses. This is unfortunate since information about remarriage would help reduce the bias associated with cross-sectional measures of marital status. As noted earlier, groups with higher rates of remarriage are less likely to be currently divorced or separated than other groups, even if all groups experienced similar rates of divorce.
4.5 Logistic Regression & Cox-Proportional Hazards Modeling
Logistic regression is used to evaluate the significance and strength of each predictor for the cross-sectional data (Pooled 1990 Sino-US Censuses, U.S. 2000 IPUMS). Men and women are studied separately, as divorce displays dramatically different patterns depending on one’s gender in China.
Using the CHNS data for the event-history analysis involved several challenges. The
CHNS Ever-Married Women (women who were ever-married between the ages of 15 and 65) longitudinal file was not released until the beginning of March of 2007. After obtaining these files, other separate longitudinal files, including Master ID files, files on education and income were merged into the marriage file. Other than some apparent coding errors and data cleaning issues, the biggest problem posed by using the CHNS to study marital history is that there are simply not many people who have experienced the event (divorce/separation). After limiting the 74
divorces to people who experienced marital dissolution from their first marriage, 52 women were
left from about 70 ever-divorced women in the pooled longitudinal CHNS (that is, there were
only 52 divorce events among 5,515 ever-married women).
Cox-Proportional Hazards Modeling techniques were adopted for studying the
relationships between predictors and the hazard of marital dissolution for the longitudinal data
(CHNS; SIPP). The proportional hazards model used in this dissertation can be written as
follows with hi(t) and hj(t) indicating the hazard rates of divorce/separation for couples i and j
with k fixed non-time-varying covariates being exponentiated on the other side of the equation.
Risk duration represents the duration of the marriage until divorce or separation occurs, with left
truncated data taken into consideration.
i th (( = marriage duration , left trucation )) ⎧ ⎫ = ⎨β 1 (exp marriage type i1 − marriage type j1 ++ β k (...) income ik − income jk )⎬ ⎩ ⎭ j th (( = marriage duration , left trucation ))
All independent variables are non-time-varying covariates. This model assumes that the
underlying hazard rate (rather than survival time) is a function of the independent variables
(covariates) (Allison 1995). The proportional hazard model is robust because it is not based on
any assumptions concerning the nature or shape of the underlying survival distribution (Allison
1995). Again, men and women are studied separately.
4.6 Methodological Limitations
Some of the limitations of the study include the uncertainty of how many undocumented
Chinese can actually be captured by either the SIPP or the IPUMS. Another limitation for the study is that the three sub-groups (Chinese labor immigrants, Chinese professionals, and Chinese
mail-order brides) that were identified in the IPUMS and SIPP data were only proxies. The 75
Chinese labor immigrants, most from Fujian, are approximated by their relatively lower
educational background from either the IPUMS or SIPP; Chinese professionals are approximated
by their high educational background from the IPUMS or SIPP, and Chinese mail-order brides
are approximated by their close date of entry into the U.S. and date of marriage, older age at
marriage and prior divorce from the SIPP. Another limitation is that some of the analyses are
based on cross-sectional data and does not take into account the duration of marriages (thus
accounting for the risk of divorce). In addition, remarriage can bias the results if some groups are more likely to re-marry following a divorce than others. 76
CHAPTER 5: RESULTS ON TESTING SELECTION & ABRUPTION
HYPOTHESES
This chapter focuses on testing the first three hypotheses proposed in chapter 4 which examine the relationship of educational attainment with marital dissolution rates in China as well as the selection and abruption effects for studying marital dissolution among Chinese immigrants. Each hypothesis will be briefly recapitulated in the subsection before going into the full analyses.
5.1 Education and Marital dissolution Rates in China (Hypothesis 1)
Hypothesis 1 in this research states that Education and marital dissolution rates in China will have a curvilinear pattern for women: higher and lower educated women should have low marital dissolution rates while average educated women should have higher marital dissolution rates.
Altogether, two datasets, the pooled 1990 Sino-US censuses and the longitudinal data of CHNS, have been involved in testing Hypothesis 1. Tables 5.1 and 5.2 present descriptive statistics
(including weighted mean13, standard deviation, and the range of the variables) and predicted
hazard ratios of divorce/separation among ever-married Chinese women based on the CHNS
longitudinal data. Furthermore, based on the pooled 1990 Sino-US censuses, Tables 5.3 and 5.4
13 The weighted mean is a mean where there is some variation in the relative contribution of individual data values to the mean. Each data value (Xi) has a weight assigned to it (Wi). Data values with larger weights contribute more to the weighted mean and data values with smaller weights contribute less to the weighted mean. The formula is
(http://www.childrens-mercy.org/stats/definitions/weightedmean.htm).
77
Table 5.1 Descriptive of the Analytical Sample for Chinese Women in the CHNS. Analytical Sample of CHNS Women Experienced Divorce in CHNS% Women (N=5515) (N=52) Ever-divorced for 1 1 Variables Weighted MeanS.D. Range Weighted Mean S.D. Range Each Category
Duration of Marriage (in years) 14.171 8.884 (0-50) 9.999 7.201 (0-28) Age at 1st marriage 22.204 3.635 (5-77) 22.775 2.834 (13-32) Education No Education 0.226 (0-1) 0.154 (0-1) 0.6 Primary School 0.211 (0-1) 0.154 (0-1) 0.7 Junior Middle School 0.347 (0-1) 0.288 (0-1) 0.8 Senior Middle School 0.121 (0-1) 0.192 (0-1) 1.5 Technical, Vocational School 0.046 (0-1) 0.154 (0-1) 3.1 College (including both 3 or 4 years) or above0.032 (0-1) 0.038 (0-1) 1.1 Locality Rural 0.657 (0-1) 0.327 (0-1) 0.5 Urban 0.343 (0-1) 0.673 (0-1) 1.9 Time Periods/Cohort Effects Year 1991 0.493 (0-1) 0.346 (0-1) 0.7 Year 1993 0.079 (0-1) 0.038 (0-1) 0.5 Year 1997 0.218 (0-1) 0.212 (0-1) 0.9 Year 2000 0.141 (0-1) 0.212 (0-1) 1.4 Year 2004 0.136 (0-1) 0.212 (0-1) 1.5 Source of Data: CHNS 1991-2004. 1. Weighted means of variables with 0-1 range are actually proportions. 78
Table 5.2 Hazard Rates of Marital Dissolution Among Ever-Married Chinese Women Age 15-52 (N=5,515). Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Age at 1st marriage 0.04 1.04 -0.01 0.99 Education (No Education is the ref.) Primary School 0.17 1.19 0.01 1.01 Junior Middle School 0.45 1.56 -0.01 0.99 Senior Middle School 1.11 * 3.05 0.46 1.59 Technical, Vocational School 1.85 *** 6.36 0.90 † 2.47 College (including both 3 or 4 years) or above 0.83 2.30 -0.25 0.78 Locality Urban (Rural is the ref.) 1.20 *** 3.32 Presence of Child(ren) Ever-birth to a son -0.79 * 0.46 Ever-birth to a daughter -0.25 0.78 Time Periods/Cohort Effects Year 1991 -1.00 0.37 Year 1993 -1.59 0.20 Year 1997 -1.22 0.30 Year 2000 -0.54 0.58 Year 2004 -0.77 0.46 -2LL 832.57 817.83 788.59 Source of Data: CHNS 1991-2004. †p<.10; *p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001.
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Table 5.3 Descriptives of the Analytical Pooled Sino-U.S. 1990 Censuses Sample. All Variables have a range of 0-1 Proportions of Males (N=41, 760) Females (N=38, 798) t-Test for In China 1990 Census Divorced/Seperated Proportions Proportions Equal Means Divorce/Seperation (428 out of 80, 558) 0.007 0.003 *** Age 15-24 0.058 0.319 0.321 25-34 0.287 0.245 0.250 35-44 0.262 0.201 0.199 45-54 0.196 0.126 0.123 55-65 0.196 0.109 0.107 Child 0.250 -- 0.705 Education Less than HS 0.876 0.836 0.891 *** High school (HS) 0.091 0.110 0.077 *** Some college 0.023 0.043 0.027 *** College and above 0.009 0.011 0.005 ***
Chinese In the U.S. 1990 PUMs Males (N=6, 441) Females (N=6, 577) Divorce/Seperation (569 out of 13, 018) 0.035 0.053 *** Age 15-24 0.026 0.226 0.209 * 25-34 0.209 0.280 0.276 35-44 0.360 0.244 0.263 * 45-54 0.243 0.139 0.134 55-65 0.162 0.111 0.119 Child 0.369 0.418 0.485 *** Education Less than HS 0.228 0.244 0.287 *** High school (HS) 0.211 0.145 0.168 *** Some college 0.246 0.227 0.230 College and above 0.315 0.384 0.314 *** Generational Status Gen. 1st 0-4 years in the U.S. 0.083 0.141 0.148 5-9 years in the U.S. 0.093 0.102 0.110 10+ years in the U.S. 0.167 0.122 0.132 Gen. 1.25 0.030 0.076 0.068 Gen. 1.5 0.032 0.054 0.044 * Gen. 1.75 0.077 0.064 0.065 Gen. 2.0 0.351 0.364 0.341 ** Gen. 2.5 0.167 0.076 0.091 ** Sources: Pooled Sino-U.S. 1990 Censuses. "--" no information. * For the significant two sample t-test, α=.05 (two-tailed), equal variances are assumed .
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Table 5.4 Logistic Regression Results of Generation Effect on Marital Dissolution by Gender, 1990. Chinese Male (N=48, 201) Chinese Female (N=45, 375) Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Intercept -6.86 -4.94 -7.08 -6.81 -5.68 -7.14 Age (15-24 is the ref. group) 25-34 1.92 *** 6.84 2.05 *** 7.74 2.46 *** 11.73 2.19 *** 8.91 35-44 2.45 *** 11.60 2.51 *** 12.27 3.41 *** 30.38 2.70 *** 14.88 45-54 2.75 *** 15.69 2.84 *** 17.11 3.51 *** 33.46 2.81 *** 16.55 55-65 2.83 *** 16.96 2.87 *** 17.60 3.21 *** 24.79 2.46 *** 11.69 Presence of Child(ren) -1.43 *** 0.24 -0.84 *** 0.43 Education (Less than HS is the ref. group) High school (HS) 0.51 *** 1.66 -0.04 0.96 1.46 *** 4.29 0.43 ** 1.54 Some college 0.51 ** 1.67 -0.48 ** 0.62 1.71 *** 5.55 0.37 * 1.45 College and above 1.11 *** 3.04 -0.30 0.74 1.32 *** 3.73 -0.24 0.79 Generational Status (Chinese in China is the ref. group) Gen. 1st 0-4 years in the U.S. 1.15 *** 3.16 1.19 *** 3.28 2.12 *** 8.35 1.57 *** 4.81 5-9 years in the U.S. 1.37 *** 3.93 1.19 *** 3.29 2.70 *** 14.90 2.08 *** 8.03 10+ years in the U.S. 1.60 *** 4.98 1.28 *** 3.59 3.21 *** 24.90 2.53 *** 12.50 Gen. 1.25 1.07 *** 2.91 1.52 *** 4.55 1.54 *** 4.65 1.43 *** 4.18 Gen. 1.5 1.06 ** 2.88 1.29 ** 3.62 2.44 *** 11.47 2.06 *** 7.87 Gen. 1.75 1.91 *** 6.77 2.16 *** 8.70 2.91 *** 18.31 2.51 *** 12.26 Gen. 2.0 1.76 *** 5.79 2.01 *** 7.44 2.68 *** 14.65 2.23 *** 9.30 Gen. 2.5 2.17 *** 8.77 2.47 *** 11.86 3.59 *** 36.14 3.17 *** 23.90
2 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.02 R G 0.01 0.02 2 0.07 0.06 0.11 0.16 0.18 0.22 R GMC 2 Modelχ 378.67 390.48 596.87 787.08 903.49 1129.33 *p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001.f.: there reference category. Sources: Pooled Sino-U.S. 1990 Censuses. 81
present the descriptive statistics and predicted log odds of being divorced or separated14 for both
Chinese ever-married adults ages 15-65 separately by gender15.
5.1a Results from the CHNS
The CHNS analysis confirms Hypothesis 1 and provides evidence of a curvilinear
relationship between education and marital dissolution among women in China. The descriptive
statistics reported in Table 5.1 demonstrate that higher proportions of women with technical, or
vocational school education or senior middle school (equivalent to high school in the US), experienced marital dissolution as compared to other women in China (see proportions of women ever-divorced for each category, Table 5.1). In Table 5.2, compared to women with no education, having technical or vocational school education increased the hazard of marital dissolution by 6.36 times (p<.001) in Model 2. In Model 3, after adding locality, presence of child(ren) and the (time) period effect, the hazard of marital dissolution for women with technical or vocational school education was still 2.47 times that of women with no education, though this finding was only significant at the .10 level. Additionally, women with senior middle school education were also more likely to experience marital dissolution as compared to
women with no education in China. However, this effect was not significant in Model 3.
College educated women were not statistically significantly different from women with no
education in Models 2 and 3 (Table 5.2).
In addition to the important role of education, urban or rural locality was also a strong predictor of marital dissolution in China. Urban women’s hazard of divorce or separation was
14 For explanations on why hazard modeling is used in some cases and logistic regression in others, see chapter 4 (section 4.5).
15 To test whether the models are truly different for each gender, a chow analog test in logistic regression (similar techniques have been used throughout the analytical chapters) has been performed χ 2 −= 2InL InL −+−− InL )]2(2[ following complete male female (for detail, see DeMaris 2004). Thus, models are divided by gender only after significant chi-square tests (at alpha= .05 level) have validated the rationale of dividing the models by gender.
82
3.32 times (p<.001) that of rural women’s (Model 3, Table 5.2). This finding was inconsistent
with previous research by Zeng and associates (2002) who studied similar outcomes using event-
history analysis. As a marriage stabilizing factor, presence of at least one male child was associated with a 54 percent lower hazard rate of marital dissolution (p<.05) for women in
China, and such an effect was not true for women who had a female child (Model 3, Table 5.2).
The year dummy variables, however, were not significant (Model 3, Table 5.2). Again, this may be an artifact of the extremely low prevalence of divorce in these data. Because there were very few marital dissolution events in the CHNS, it was difficult to evaluate time or cohort effects.
This is a limitation of the current study and readers should keep in mind that these findings may
not be generalizable.
5.1b Results from the Pooled Sino-US 1990 Censuses
The analysis of pooled Sino-US 1990 Censuses provides mixed support for Hypothesis 1.
The relationship between the probability of being divorced or separated and educational
achievement is first graphed in Figure 5.1 with the attempts to visually capture curvilinear results
from the effects of education on the marital dissolution rates, especially for women in China.
According to the descriptive statistics reported in Figure 5.1, in both countries, women who had
the equivalent of a high school education had the highest probability of being divorced or
separated. In contrast, poorly-educated men (illiterate or semi-illiterate) in China and college-
educated men in the U.S. (especially those who went to junior college) had the highest
probability of being divorced or separated in 1990 (Figure 5.1).
Table 5.3 presents descriptive statistics of the pooled Sino-US 1990 Censuses analytical
sample as well as significance of t-tests for testing the equality of means between gender groups.
According to the t statistics reported in Table 5.3, marital dissolution is significantly different 83
Females in China Figure 5.1 Bi-national Comparisons of Probability of Being Males in China Divorced/Separated by Education, 1990. Chinese Females in the U.S. Chinese Males in the U.S. 0.07 e 0.06
0.05 rced/Separat 0.04
0.03
0.02
0.01 Probability of Being Divo Being of Probability
0 Illiterate or Primary Junior middle Senior midle Technical Junior-college University semi-literate school school school school Education Sources: Pooled Sino-U.S. 1990 Censuses.
along gender lines within the country context. Among mainland Chinese, Chinese men are more likely to be divorced or separated than Chinese women, t= -5.02 (not shown), p < .001. On the other hand, Chinese immigrant women or Chinese American women are more likely to be divorced or separated than their male counterparts in the U.S., t= 7.19 (not shown), p < .001. In both countries, educational achievements are also significantly different by gender. However, if we compared the descriptive statistics between groups across the countries, both men and women
Chinese in the U.S. were much more likely to be divorced or separated compared to theirmainland Chinese counterparts (3.5 percent for men in the U.S. vs. 0.7 percent for men in
China and 5.3 percent vs. 0.3 percent for women in China). Nevertheless, similar to nearly all other immigrant groups, Chinese immigrants in the U.S. had dramatically higher education levels 84
compared to mainland Chinese. About 38.4 percent of Chinese immigrant men had a college
degree compared to only 1.1 percent of Chinese men in China. Similarly, for women, about 31.4 percent of Chinese immigrant women had a college degree compared to only 0.5 percent among
Chinese women in China. Thus, based on descriptive statistics, the composition of Chinese expatriates in the U.S. did not bear much resemblance to the average mainland Chinese.
Similar to the descriptive findings, the multivariable evidence (see Table 5.4) provides mixed support for Hypothesis 1. Table 5.4 presents the predicted log odds of being divorced or separated for both Chinese men and women separately. Model 1 in Table 5.4 includes age, presence of children (only for women, as the question regarding the number of surviving children was only asked among women in the China 1990 Census), and education. Model 2 includes assimilation variables of generation and length of stay among the first-generation immigrants, with mainland Chinese as the reference group. Finally, Model 3 includes all the variables from previous models.
On the one hand, Hypothesis 1 is partially supported among women as indicated by the non-linear trend of the log odds of being divorced or separated for the education dummy variables. In model 1 of Table 5.4, the odds of divorcing for women with some college education16 is 5.55 times the odds of divorcing for women with less than a high school education.
The odds of being divorced were 4.29 times for high school educated women and 3.73 times for women with college degrees as compared to the odds of being divorced for women with less than a high school education. However, generational status mediated much of the education effects on divorce for women and the general curvilinear pattern became less apparent (Model 3). In
Model 3 of Table 5.4, women with a high-school education became the group with the highest
16 Women with some college education include women with associate degrees and/or degrees from technical or vocational schools. 85
odds of being divorced, though to a much lesser extent (odds ratio dropped from 4.29 to 1.54),
but college educated women were no longer statistically significantly different from women with less than a high school education.
On the other hand, Hypothesis 1 is not supported for men. Among men, high school educated men and some college were slightly more likely to divorce compared to men with the lowest education levels. The odds of being divorced for college educated men were 3.04 times
(Model 1, Table 5.4) the odds of being divorced for men with no high school diploma. In Model
3, after including controls for generational status, the effects of education changed dramatically.
Men with a high school education or above were less likely to divorce compared to men without a high school diploma. In other words, the association of higher education with divorce (evident in Model 1 of Table 5.4) is due to the fact that immigrants and higher generation Chinese living in the U.S. are more likely to have higher levels of education and are more likely to be divorced or separated.
5.2 Testing for Selection Effects (Hypothesis 2)
Hypothesis 2 addresses the selection hypothesis that: Marital dissolution among mainland Chinese will be less common compared to recent Chinese immigrants in the U.S.
Moreover, according to marital homogamy theory, controlling for demographic characteristics and divorce risk factors (e.g., age, age at marriage and educational level) should reduce this gap. In other words, the selection hypothesis argues that Chinese immigrants are divorce-prone and thus should have higher marital dissolution rates as they are inherently different from their counterparts with similar traits in mainland China. Hypothesis 2 was mainly tested using the pooled Sino-US 1990 Censuses and the SIPP. In order to make effective comparisons, extra 86
attention has been given to the contrast between recent Chinese immigrants to the U.S. (first-
generation immigrants who have stayed in the U.S. for less than 5 years) and mainland Chinese
with similar characteristics. Again, Table 5.4 is used for examining the selection hypothesis.
The analysis confirms Hypothesis 2 and provides evidence that a selection effect is likely
among Chinese immigrants. Overall, as indicated in Model 2 of Table 5.4, without controlling
for the covariates, the odds of being divorced or separated among Chinese in China were much
lower than those among recent Chinese immigrants in the U.S. In the additive models with all
the controls, Chinese immigrants still had much higher marital dissolution rates as compared to
mainland Chinese. The gap between the recently-arrived male immigrants and men in China
even increased from Model 2 to Model 3, with the odds of marital dissolution increasing from
3.16 times higher (Model 2) to 3.28 times higher (Model 3). On the other hand, the odds of
marital dissolution between recently-arrived female immigrants and women in China fell from
8.35 (Model 2) to 4.81 (Model 3) after adding the controls.
Selection effects cannot be precisely assessed if the two groups are not similar and vary
depending on immigrants’ mode of entry into the U.S. Therefore, selection effects are tested
separately among three groups, each with a corresponding sub-hypothesis. Hypothesis 2.1 tests
selection effects among Chinese immigrants with less than a high school education (as proxies
for lower-skilled Chinese labor immigrants who tend to work in service or low-skilled US jobs).
Hypothesis 2.2 tests selection effects among Chinese immigrants with a college education or above (proxies for Chinese professionals in the U.S.). Hypothesis 2.3 tests selection effects among mail-order brides.
87
5.2a Selection Effect among Lower-Skilled Chinese Immigrants (Hypothesis 2.1)
Overall, the logistic regression models in Table 5.5 provide some support for the
selection effect among Chinese women, but not among Chinese males. According to Table 5.5,
recently arrived (first-generation immigrants with years of stay in the U.S. ranging from 0 to 4
years) male immigrants with less than a high school education were not different from their
Fujianese counterparts17 in terms of marital dissolution rates, and showed no significantly
different tendency to divorce or separate as compared to their Chinese counterparts outside of the
Fujian province. On the other hand, for Chinese women with less than a high school education,
the selection hypothesis is strongly supported. Being a Chinese female immigrant who recently
arrived in the U.S. raised the odds of being divorced or separated by 4.5 times (Model 3, Table
5.5) compared to female counterparts in China. Thus, there is strong evidence for selection
effects among Chinese female immigrants with poor educational background; while comparable
2 2 findings are absent among their male counterparts. Overall, the model fit statistics (R G, R GMC
and model χ 2 ) indicate that compared to Chinese men with less education, generational status could better explain Chinese women with less education in terms of their likelihood of being
divorced or separated. This is evident in Model 2 of Table 5.5 because the model fit statistics are
2 2 2 2 higher for women (R G = 0.01, R GMC = 0.12, and model χ =282.37) than for men (R G = 0.00,
17 To increase the stability of the model (very few Fujianese women in China were divorced or separated), the models were replicated with a different omitted geographic location group (China except the Fujian province and the Fujian province alone) to evaluate the differences between recent immigrants and people who live in Fujian. Another reason for changing the baseline comparison group is also because new evidence showing that illegal Chinese have been greatly diversified in terms of place of origin in China in recent years (Liang and Morooka 2004).
88
Tables 5.5 Logistic Regression Results ofon Marital for Chinese Dissoluti with Less Than High School Education, 1990. Male with LTHS (N=36, 500) Female with LTHS (N=36, 463) Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log OddsOR Log OR Odds Log OROdds
Intercept -10.27 -4.89 -10.62 -11.96 -5.77 -10.53
Age 0.24 *** 1.27 0.25 *** 1.29 0.39 *** 1.48 0.27 *** 1.30
Age Square 0.00 *** 1.00 0.00 *** 1.00 0.00 *** 1.00 0.00 *** 1.00
Number of surviving child -2.00 *** 0.14 -0.83 *** 0.44 Generational Status (Chinese other than Fujianese in China) Fujianese 0.88 2.42 0.91 *** 2.48 -12.63 0.00 -13.42 0.00 Gen. 1st
0-4 years in the U.S. 0.44 1.56 0.11 1.11 1.97 *** 7.18 1.50 *** 4.50
5-9 years in the U.S. 0.83 *** a 2.30 0.40 1.49 2.65 *** 14.18 2.22 *** 9.22
10+ years in the U.S. 1.81 * 6.11 1.28 *** 3.61 2.98 *** 19.65 2.48 *** 11.94
Gen. 1.25 1.26 3.53 1.89 *** a 6.60 1.91 ** 6.75 2.01 *** 7.47
Gen. 1.5 0.30 * 1.34 0.93 2.54 1.88 ** 6.57 1.99 ** 7.34
Gen. 1.75 1.47 *** 4.36 1.967.07 ** 3.69 *** 40.23 3.48 *** 32.45
Gen. 2.0 1.60 * a 4.95 1.87 *** a 6.51 2.71 *** 15.03 2.59 *** 13.40
Gen. 2.5 1.32 3.73 1.82 ** 6.16 3.37 *** 28.99 3.36 *** 28.79
2 RG 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.01 2 RGMC 0.06 0.02 0.08 0.06 0.12 0.15 2 Modelχ 190.73 66.77 265.98 135.88 282.37 349.93 *p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001. "a" in the shaded columns: coefficientificantly differentsign from Fujianese (p<.10). Sources: Pooled Sino-U.S. 1990 Censuse. 89
2 2 2 18 2 19 R GMC = 0.02, and model χ = 66.77), indicating improvement of model fit. R G and R GMC
are two of the eight pseudo R squares that DeMaris (2002) examined for measuring model fit in
2 logistic regression. R G is analogous to R square in OLS, but it has an upper bound that less than
2 2 1, while R GMC is a scaled measure of R G with an upper bound of 1 (DeMaris 2002, 2004).
Although they provide different results, the general fit statistics are in the same direction.
As pointed out in earlier chapters, Fujian is the focal province because the majority of the
lower-skilled Chinese workers in the U.S. are from this area. Figure 5.2 illustrates Fujian marital
dissolution rates by education and gender using Census data from China in 1990 and 2000. For
mainland Fujianese in almost every education category, there has been an increase in marital
dissolution rates during the decade (1990-2000) and the upward trend was especially apparent
among women with a high school education, college, or above. Also noticeable in Figure 5.2
was that the least-educated Fujianese men were more likely to be divorced than men of more
advanced educational backgrounds. Poorly-educated Fujianese women, on the other hand, had
very low percentages who were divorced. The gender differences could be attributable to gender
differences in remarriage, or to educational differences between spouses (i.e., if women tend to
marry more educated men than themselves). Figure 5.3 illustrates the county-level divorce rates
by gender in Fujian province in years 1990 and 2000 respectively, with darker colors signifying
higher divorce rates. The regions in the box are immigrant-sending regions in Fujian according
to Liang and Ye (2001); there is also a smaller map of China that indicates the relative position
2 18 ⎛ L ⎞ N 2 ⎜ 0 ⎟ , where L0 is the likelihood of the intercept-only model and L1 is the likelihood for the R G 1 −= ⎜ ⎟ ⎝ L1 ⎠ 2 hypothesized model (DeMaris 2002). R G is also known as the generalized R-square measure. 2 N 19 2 2 2 R G , where 1 − L 0 is a scaled measure. R GMC is also known as the rescaled likelihood- R GMC = 2 N − L 0 )(1 based pseudo R-square measure (DeMaris 2002). 90
of Fujian province in China. The upward divorce trend in Fujian province could also be easily
spotted in Figure 5.3, which shows that the percentage divorced in 2000 were higher than that of
1990. Moreover, mainland Fujian men also had much higher percentage divorced than their female counterparts in 2000. However, according to Figure 5.3, immigrant sending regions in
Fujian did not seem to differ dramatically from other regions of Fujian province in terms the
percentage divorced. This could signify that local marriage culture had not been altered much by the commonly practiced out-migration.
Figure 5.2 Comparisons of 1990 and 2000 Divorce Rates in Fujian Province by Education and Gender. 0.025 1990 Male 1990 Female 0.02 2000 Male 2000 Female
0.015
0.01 Divorce Rates Divorce
0.005
0 Illiterate or Primary Junior middle Senior middle Technical Junior-college University semi-literate school school school school Education Data Sources: China 1990 1% Census and China 2000 Census Published Tabulated Tables.
91
Figure 5.3 Percentage1 Divorced at County Level in Fujian Province of China by Gender in
1990 and 2000.
1. Note: Subtitles of “Divorce Rates” are misnomers. I could not correct them easily because these figures were created a year ago by special mapping tools. 92
5.2b Selection Effect among Chinese Professionals in the U.S (Hypothesis 2.2)
Among high skilled immigrants, evidence of selection effects was found for men but not for women. Results from logistic regression models for people with a college education or above are reported in Table 5.6. With the controls added in Model 3, being a Chinese male immigrant who recently arrived at the U.S. increased the odds of being divorced or separated by 4.76
(Model 3, Table 5.6) times as compared to a male counterpart in China. However, for Chinese women with a college degree or above, this was not the case and the selection hypothesis was not supported. College educated Chinese women were not statistically significantly different from their professional counterparts in China.
5.3 Testing for Abruption Hypothesis (Hypothesis 3)
Similar to the selection effect, I tested abruption effects separately by immigrants’ mode of entry to the U.S. Thus, Hypothesis 3 (Testing for Abruption hypothesis) tests whether the likelihood of being divorced among recent Chinese immigrants in the U.S. is lower compared to mainland Chinese and more settled Chinese immigrants as well. Parallel sub-hypotheses are tested for the same three groups in the previous section on testing the selection effect. Besides testing for abruption effects among Chinese immigrants with less than a high school education and Chinese with a college education or above, abruption effects were also assessed for Chinese mail-order brides (approximated by their close dates of entry into the U.S. and dates of marriage).
5.3a Abruption Effect among Lower-Skilled Chinese Immigrants (Hypothesis 3.1)
The logistic regression models for people with less than a high school education in Table
5.5 provide mixed support for abruption effects. Recently arrived male immigrants with less 93
Tables 5.6 Logistic Regression Results of Marital Dissolution for Chinese with College Education or Higher, 1990. Male with College+ Educ. (N=2, 940) Female with College+ Educ. (N=2, 243) Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR
Intercept -9.50 -5.04 -10.67 -16.97 -5.16 -16.82 Age 0.26 ** 1.30 0.24 ** 1.27 0.66 *** 1.94 0.58 *** 1.79 Age Square 0.00 ** 1.00 0.00 * 1.00 -0.01 *** 0.99 -0.01 *** 0.99 Number of surviving child(ren) -1.31 *** 0.27 -1.27 *** 0.28 Generational Status (Chinese in China is the ref.) Gen. 1st
0-4 years in the U.S. 1.49 * 4.42 1.56 * 4.76 1.51 4.51 1.06 2.89 5-9 years in the U.S. 1.74 ** 5.70 1.59 * 4.92 1.79 † 6.00 1.11 3.04 10+ years in the U.S. 1.10 3.01 0.66 1.94 2.57 * 13.10 1.62 5.03 Gen. 1.25 1.52 * 4.57 1.38 † 3.99 0.50 1.64 -0.16 0.85 Gen. 1.5 1.63 * 5.10 1.15 3.15 2.45 * 11.60 1.17 3.23 Gen. 1.75 2.03 ** 7.63 1.79 ** 6.00 2.07 † 7.95 1.27 3.56 Gen. 2.0 2.06 *** 7.83 1.98 ** 7.21 1.89 † 6.62 1.16 3.20 Gen. 2.5 1.46 † 4.29 1.37 † 3.94 2.98 ** 19.77 2.31 * 10.08 2 RG 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.04 0.01 0.04 2 RGMC 0.04 0.03 0.07 0.12 0.05 0.15 2 Modelχ 26.64 24.17 51.64 80.87 32.02 99.25 †p<.10; *p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001. Sources: Pooled Sino-U.S. 1990 Censuse. 94
than a high school education were even less likely to divorce/separate compared to their
Fujianese counterparts in China, though this difference was not statistically significant (see the added column which uses Fujianese in mainland China as the omitted category when testing the significance of the coefficients). Moreover, recently-arrived male immigrants showed no greater tendency to divorce compared to mainland Chinese outside of the Fujian province. Another piece of evidence for the immigration abruption effects was that the odds ratios among the recently arrived immigrants were consistently lower than their more settled Chinese immigrant counterparts (Model 2 and 3 for both genders). However, for Chinese women with less than a high school education, the abruption hypothesis was only partially supported. Controlling for all the covariates in Model 3 (Table 5.5), being a Chinese female immigrant who recently arrived at the U.S. raised the odds of being divorced or separated by 4.5 times as compared to female counterparts in China. However, this odds ratio was consistently lower than those of the more settled Chinese female immigrants, which signified some abruption effect of being a new immigrant who just recently arrived at a new country.
5.3b Abruption Effect among Chinese Professionals in the U.S. (Hypothesis 3.2)
The logistic regression models for people with a college education or above in Table 5.6 provide no support for the abruption effect among professional men or women. In fact, for men, the pattern is the opposite of what the abruption hypothesis predicts. In Model 3 (Table 5.6) the odds of being divorced or separated for Chinese male immigrants who had recently arrived in the
U.S. were higher instead of lower as compared to the odds for Chinese men in China. Compared to the more settled Chinese immigrants, the odds of being divorced or separated for Chinese male immigrants who recently arrived were not consistently lower, either. In contrast, there was no significant difference in the odds of divorce between professional Chinese immigrant women 95
in different generational categories when compared to their counterparts in China. Chinese
American women of the 2.5 generation were the exception, as their odds of divorce were 10.08
times higher compared to their counterparts in China.
5.3c Abruption Effect among Chinese Mail-order Brides in the U.S. (Hypothesis 3.3)
The SIPP provides an opportunity to examine the hazard of marital dissolution among the
mail-order bride proxies, as defined by the close date of entry into the U.S. and date of marriage
(entered the U.S. first and married within the same year). Mail-order bride proxies were further divided into two kinds: mail-order brides in a mixed marriage and mail-order brides in a Chinese endogamous marriage. Quite unexpectedly, as shown in Table 5.7, more mail-order brides were
Table 5.7 Descriptive of the Analytical Sample1 for Chinese in the SIPP, N=447. 2 Variable and Range Weighted Mean S.D. Divorced/Separated (0-1) 0.027 Interracial couple (0-1) 0.171 Mail-order brides (proxy) in mixed marriages (0-1) 0.069 Mail-order brides (proxy) in non-mixed marriages (0-1) 0.074 Age of first marriage (15-59) 28.014 7.119 Educational categories (0-1) Both less than high school 0.172 Both high school (including some college) 0.269 Both some college 0.033 Both college or above 0.526 Couples with different education backgrounds (0-1) 0.250 Income at first spell (0- $118, 808) $8, 754.14 10249.580 Presence of at least One Child (0-1) 0.765 Citizenship (0-1) Both spouses FB, regardless of citizenship status 0.778 One spouse is non-citizen, the other is native 0.083 One spouse is naturalized citizen, the other is native 0.139 Generation Status Both foreign-born 0.778 One foreign-born, one native-born 0.222 1. Includes married-couples who were married for the first time at the beginning of each SIPP panel or got married during the on-going waves of each panel. 2. Weighted means of varibles with 0-1 range are actually proportions. Source: SIPP90, SIPP91, SIPP92, SIPP93, SIPP96, SIPP01.
96 actually entering into same-culture marriages among Chinese themselves, especially between
American-born Chinese and Chinese from China (possibly between Chinese and other Asians).
Table 5.8 includes event-history results pertaining to mail-order brides. First examined are the mail-order brides in mixed or non-mixed marriages compared to others in the SIPP who are not in mail-order-bride type of marriages. The hazard of marital dissolution among Chinese-
Chinese (or possibly one spouse is Asian20, one spouse is Chinese) types of mail-order-bride type of marriages were 3.07 (Model 1) times as high as for non-mail-order type marriages, but the difference was not significant. After controlling for couples’ characteristics, the hazard of marital dissolution for this type of marriage declined to 1.63 (Model 2) or 1.66 (Model 3) times that of non-mail-order type marriages. However, none of the mail-order bride type of marriages was significant in predicting the hazard of marital dissolution. Nevertheless, the results from
Cox proportional hazard models predicting the hazard of divorce provide some support for the abruption hypothesis (Table 5.8). Although Chinese mail-order brides were no more likely to experience marital instability as compared to Chinese immigrant women who are not in such type of marriage, the results on citizenship status (Model 2) and generational status (Model 3) in
Table 5.8 suggest that marriages between foreign-born Chinese and US-born Chinese (or US- born Asian) are less stable than parings in which both are foreign-born. More specifically, couples involving non-citizen/native pairings experienced a 6.49 fold increase in the hazard of marital dissolution. Couples involving naturalized citizen/native pairings were also unstable and associated with a 7.81 fold increased hazard of union dissolution compared to couples who were both foreign-born (Model 2, Table 5.8). Similarly, marriages between foreign-born/native-born were associated with a 7.29 fold increased hazard of union dissolution compared to marriages where both partners were born in China. This provides some support for the idea that newly-
20 I am using the SIPP’s definition of Asian here.
97 arrived Asian immigrants may use marriage as a means of obtaining legal residence in the United
States and such marriages are consequently less stable than other marriages.
Table 5.8 Hazard Rates of Marital Dissolution Among Chinese Couples (N=447). Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Mail-Order Brides (proxy) (None-mail-order brides is the ref.) Mail-order brides in mixed marriages 0.63 1.87 -0.43 0.65 -0.47 0.62 Mail-order brides in non-mixed marriages 1.12 3.07 0.49 1.63 0.51 1.66 Couple Characteristics Age at 1st marriage -0.04 0.96 -0.04 0.96 Education (both less than high school is the ref.) both high school 0.34 1.40 0.38 1.47 both some college -0.50 0.61 -0.53 0.59 both college -0.87 0.42 -0.80 0.45 Different in Educational Achievement -0.24 0.79 -0.23 0.79 Log of Income at 1st spell 0.18 1.20 0.18 1.19 Presence of at least One Child 0.95 2.59 0.96 2.62 Citizenship (Both spouses foreign-born is the ref.) One spouse is non-citizen, the other is native 1.87 * 6.49 One spouse is naturalized citizen, the other is native 2.06 * 7.81 Generation Status (both foreign-born is the ref.) One foreign-born, one native-born 1.99 ** 7.29 -2LL 88.52 77.17 77.20 Source of Data: SIPP 1990-2001. *p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001.
5.4 Summary of the Chapter
This chapter focuses on testing the first three hypotheses proposed in chapter 4 which examine the effects of education on divorce rates in China as well as the selection and abruption effects for studying marital dissolution among Chinese immigrants. There are several reasons why the first hypothesis regarding the effects of education on marital dissolution is important.
First of all, education is a critical human capital characteristic that can be easily carried over by immigrants and thus it is also comparable across cultures. Consequently, mode-of-entry
98
indicators in this research are mainly approximated by educational attainment. This hypothesis can also be used as a yardstick to test some of the previous seemingly inconsistent findings on the relationship between educational achievement and marital dissolution in China. Results from
CHNS and the 1990 pooled Sino-US censuses both confirmed that there are curvilinear effects of education on the marital dissolution rates among women in China. The tests of selection and abruption hypotheses were further differentiated into two or three sub-hypotheses depending on immigrant mode of entry.
The abruption hypothesis worked reasonably well in explaining low divorce rates among the recently arrived male low-skilled immigrants. Compared to their Fujianese counterparts, recently arrived male immigrants with less than a high school education show no significantly different tendency than their Chinese counterparts outside of Fujian province. On the other hand, recently arrived female immigrants with less than a high school education are much more likely to be divorced than their female counterparts in China, either in Fujian or outside of Fujian province. One explanation for the gender differences might be because most of the labor migration from Fujian province was dominated by men and this much skewed sex-ratio probably gave more room for women to change partners than for males. Additionally, women from China may also have greater freedom to choose partners other than Chinese on the American marriage market, largely because Asian women are more popular marriage partners than their male counterparts.
There was some evidence for the selection effect among the highly-educated Chinese males, but not among Chinese women. This may be because, compared to highly-educated
Chinese female immigrants, highly-educated male immigrants from China are more likely to marry wives with less education and also more likely to go back to China to find a partner as
99
Chinese men are not as popular as Chinese women on American marriage market. Thus, many
Chinese will go back and marry someone quickly without extensive dating. The fickle foundation may contribute to the higher marital dissolution rates among the recently arrived highly-educated Chinese males.
Last but not the least, most of the Chinese mail-order-bride types of marriages are relatively stable, which provides supports for the abruption hypothesis. However, the results also show that there might be sham marriages or green-card marriages practiced among the Chinese immigrants as marriages between foreign-born Chinese and US-born Chinese (or US-born
Asian) being less stable than parings in which both partners were born in China.
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CHAPTER 6: RESULTS ON TESTING THE ASSIMILATION & SEGMENTED
ASSIMILATION HYPOTHESES
Chapter 6 focuses on testing hypotheses 4 and 5 proposed in chapter 4 which examine different assimilation hypotheses for understanding marital dissolution among Chinese immigrants. Again, each hypothesis will be recapitulated in the subsection before going into the full analyses.
6.1 Testing for the Assimilation Hypothesis (Hypothesis 4)
Hypothesis 4 or the Assimilation Hypothesis in this research states that marital dissolution rates among Chinese immigrants in the U.S. increase over the length of their stay and also over generations. More specifically, marital dissolution rates accelerate the longer immigrants from China stay in the U.S. Divorce rates for the descendents of Chinese immigrants
(second generation or above) should closely resemble the native populations in the U.S. The main dataset that was used to test the assimilation, or the segmented assimilation hypothesis, was the U.S. 2000 IPUMS.
For comparison reasons, two figures are included in this chapter (Figure 6.1 and 6.2), the first based on the pooled 1990 Sino-US censuses and the second on the 2000 IPUMS. Figure
6.1 graphs marital dissolution rates or the probability of being divorced or separated by generational status. As clearly indicated by the pooled 1990 Sino-US censuses, Chinese immigrants, regardless of gender, have higher probabilities of being divorced or separated as compared to Chinese in China. However, there seems to be a strong curvilinear pattern of generational status on the probability of having a divorce/separation among the female immigrants. Both first-generation Chinese women and women who belong to the 2.5 generation
101
Figure 6.1 Probability of Being Divorced/Separated by Generational Status, 1990. 0.12
0.1 Male Female
0.08
g Divorced/Separated 0.06
0.04
0.02 Probability of Bein Probability
0 Chinese in 1st Gen. 1.25 Gen. 1.5 Gen. 1.75 Gen. 2 Gen. 2.5 Gen. China Generational Status Sources: Pooled Sino-U.S. 1990 Censuses.
Figure 6.2 Total Number of Chinese by Year of Immigration, 2000. total Chinese 80,000
70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000 Total Chinese 30,000
20,000
10,000
0 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 Year of Immigration Sources: 5% U.S. 2000 IPUMS.
102 or above are more likely to divorce than female Chinese immigrants of other generational statuses.
One of the advantages of the 2000 IPUMS is that it provides the information on the year of immigration, in single-year intervals, while the 1990 IPUMS only provides year of immigration by 3- or 5-year time intervals. The 2000 IPUMS data show (Figure 6.2) that the distribution of Chinese immigrants by year of entry peaks at 1980 and 1990 with over 70,000 entering U.S. in those years. Therefore the analyses that follow use the more detailed 2000
IPUMS data even though the 2000 Chinese census data is not yet available at this time
(therefore, when I use the 2000 U.S. Census data for testing assimilation hypotheses, I do not make the binational comparisons—all binational comparisons use 1990 data). Using the 2000
IPUMS, Figure 6.3 indicates that Chinese women are more likely to be divorced or separated than Chinese men in every generational status. However, there is also a strong curvilinear pattern of the effect of generational status on the probability of being divorced or separated.
Both first-generation Chinese and Chinese who belong to the 2nd generation or above are more likely to be divorced or separated than Chinese who are in the 1.25, 1.5 or 1.75 generations. Of course, these patterns do not control for any covariates and the analytical results are included in the following tables. Other than the effects of gender and generational status, Figures 6.4 and 6.5 further look at the probability of Chinese immigrants being divorced or separated by educational level. However, the upward trend of higher marital dissolution across immigrant generations as predicted by the assimilation theory is not borne out in the results.
As said earlier, only the 2000 IPUMS was involved in testing the assimilation hypothesis.
Table 6.1 includes descriptive statistics for the final analytical sample and Tables 6.2, 6.3, and
6.4 show the logistic regression models on the odds of being divorced/separated. Table 6.2
103
indicates the overall odds of being divorced or separated for Chinese men or women. Tables 6.3
and 6.4 further test the assimilation hypothesis among Chinese with less than a high school
education and the college-educated separated by gender. In order to help test the assimilation
hypothesis, one percent of the American (US-born) non-Hispanic White population was
randomly extracted from the 2000 IPUMS and used for the purposes of comparison.
Figure 6.3 Probability of Being Divorced/Separated by Generational Status, 2000. 0.16 Male 0.14 Female 0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02 Probability of Being Divorced/Separated Being of Probability
0 Native-born 1st Gen. 1.25 Gen. 1.5 Gen. 1.75 Gen. 2nd Gen. 2.5 Gen. Caucasians Generational Status Sources: 5% U.S. 2000 IPUMS.
According to Table 6.1, Chinese immigrants and American Chinese descendents are better-educated than the native-born non-Hispanic Whites: 45 percent of Chinese men have a college degree or above as compared to 25 percent of the native-born non-Hispanic Whites. A similar pattern holds for women as 41 percent of Chinese women in the U.S. have a college
104
Figure 6.4 Probability of Being Divorce/Seperated by Gender, Generational Status and Educational Level, 1990. Male In China 1st Gen 1.25 Gen 0.14 1.5 Gen 1.75 Gen 0.12 2nd Gen 2.5 Gen 0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0 lt hs hs some college university+
Sources: Pooled Sino-U.S. 1990 Censuses.
Female 0.16
0.14
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0 lt hs hs some college university+ Sources: Pooled Sino-U.S. 1990 Censuses.
105
Figure 6.5 Probability of Being Divorce/Separated by Gender, Generational Status and Educational Level, 2000. Male 0.16 1st Gen. 0.14 1.25 Gen. 1.5 Gen. 0.12 1.75 Gen. 0.1 2nd Gen. 2.5 Gen. 0.08 Native whites
0.06
0.04
0.02 Probability of being divorced/separated being of Probability 0 less than high school high school some college University+ Education
Female
0.18
0.16
0.14
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02 Probability of being divorced/separated being of Probability 0 less than high school high school some college University+ Education Sources: 5% US 2000 PUMS.
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Table 6.1 Descriptive Statistics of the Analytical U.S. 2000 Census Sample. Native-born Non-Hispanic White Men Native-born Non-Hispanic White Women (N=35, 370) (N=35, 595) 1 Variables Weighted Mean S. D. Range Weighted Mean S. D. Range Being Divorced/Separated 0.11 (0-1) 0.14 (0-1) Age 38.53 13.71 (15-65) 39.06 13.81 (15-65) Education Less than HS 0.20 (0-1) 0.18 (0-1) High school (HS) 0.27 (0-1) 0.26 (0-1) Some college 0.29 (0-1) 0.32 (0-1) College and above 0.25 (0-1) 0.24 (0-1) Personal Income $40, 669.97 51920.28 (0-$711,000) $20, 787.59 28411.80 (0-$774,000) Child Presence No child 0.67 (0-1) 0.61 (0-1) Pre-school child (age 0-4) 0.12 (0-1) 0.14 (0-1) Child age 5-17 0.21 (0-1) 0.25 (0-1)
Chinese Male Chinese Female (N=48, 089) (N=52, 245) Being Divorced/Separated 0.04 (0-1) 0.06 (0-1) Age (15-65) 36.77 13.17 (15-65) 37.32 12.92 (15-65) Education Less than HS 0.21 (0-1) 0.22 (0-1) High school (HS) 0.13 (0-1) 0.15 (0-1) Some college 0.21 (0-1) 0.23 (0-1) College and above 0.45 (0-1) 0.41 (0-1) Personal Income $38, 176.19 53839.39 (0-$726,400) $22, 278.36 33685.39 (0-$713,000) Child Presence No child 0.65 (0-1) 0.63 (0-1) Pre-school child (age 0-4) 0.13 (0-1) 0.14 (0-1) Child age 5-17 0.22 (0-1) 0.23 (0-1) Generational Status 0-4 years in the U.S. 0.09 (0-1) 0.11 (0-1) 5-9 years in the U.S. 0.09 (0-1) 0.10 (0-1) 10+ years in the U.S. 0.24 (0-1) 0.25 (0-1) Gen. 1.25 0.07 (0-1) 0.06 (0-1) Gen. 1.5 0.05 (0-1) 0.04 (0-1) Gen. 1.75 0.03 (0-1) 0.03 (0-1) Gen. 2.0 0.35 (0-1) 0.32 (0-1) Gen. 2.5 0.08 (0-1) 0.09 (0-1) Sources: 5% US 2000 PUMS. 1. Weighted means of varibles with 0-1 range are actually proportions.
107
Table 6.2 Logistic Regression Models of Marital Dissolutionong Chinese am Immigrants and Native-born Non-Hispanic Whites, 2000. Male (N=83,459) Female (N=87,840) Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Intercept -10.89 -2.07 -10.19 -8.58 -1.81 -8.26 Age 0.41 *** 1.51 0.42 *** 1.52 0.24 *** 1.27 0.25 *** 1.29 Age square 0.00 *** 1.00 0.00 *** 1.00 0.00 *** 1.00 0.00 *** 1.00 Education (Less than HS is the ref. group) High school (HS) 0.35 *** 1.42 0.11 * 1.12 0.19 *** 1.21 -0.04 0.96 Some college 0.22 *** 1.24 0.03 1.03 0.17 *** 1.19 -0.03 0.97 College and above -0.44 *** 0.64 -0.35 *** 0.70 -0.49 *** 0.61 -0.51 *** 0.60 Log of Personal Income -0.01 0.99 -0.03 *** 0.97 0.13 *** 1.14 0.13 *** 1.14 Child Presence (No child is the ref. group) Pre-school child (age 0-4) -1.57 *** 0.21 -1.51 *** 0.22 -0.58 *** 0.56 -0.57 *** 0.57 Child age 5-17 -1.25 *** 0.29 -1.21 *** 0.30 -0.08 ** 0.92 -0.09 ** 0.91 Generational Status (Native-born Non-Hispanic White is the ref. group) Gen. 1st
0-4 years in the U.S. -1.43 *** 0.24 -1.32 *** 0.27 -1.24 *** 0.29 -0.76 *** 0.47 5-9 years in the U.S. -1.28 *** 0.28 -1.28 *** 0.28 -0.98 *** 0.37 -0.88 *** 0.42 10+ years in the U.S. -0.92 *** 0.40 -1.03 *** 0.36 -0.58 *** 0.56 -0.82 *** 0.44 Gen. 1.25 -1.57 *** 0.21 -1.06 *** 0.35 -1.39 *** 0.25 -0.94 *** 0.39 Gen. 1.5 -1.60 *** 0.20 -0.97 *** 0.38 -1.65 *** 0.19 -1.05 *** 0.35 Gen. 1.75 -1.46 *** 0.23 -0.75 *** 0.47 -1.11 *** 0.33 -0.51 *** 0.60 Gen. 2.0 -1.03 *** 0.36 -0.80 *** 0.45 -0.90 *** 0.41 -0.71 *** 0.49 Gen. 2.5 -0.56 *** 0.57 -0.27 *** 0.76 -0.51 *** 0.60 -0.28 *** 0.76
2 R G 0.06 0.02 0.07 0.05 0.02 0.07 2 R GMC 0.15 0.05 0.18 0.12 0.04 0.14 2 Modelχ 5088.18 1653.78 6144.92 4959.68 1628.58 5932.95 *p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001. OR: Odds Ratio. Sources: 5% US 2000 PUMS. 108
Table 6.3 Logistic Regression Modelsrital of DissolutionMa among Chinese Immigrantsd Native-born an Non-Hispanic Whitesess with Than L a High School Education, 2000. Male (N=17,729) Female (N=18,125) Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log OddsOR OR Log Odds Intercept -10.09 -2.25 -10.30 -8.05 *** -2.03 -8.60 Age 0.38 *** 1.46 0.42 *** 1.53 0.24 *** 1.27 0.30 *** 1.34 Age square 0.00 *** 1.00 0.00 *** 1.00 0.00 *** 1.00 0.00 *** 1.00 Log of Personal Income 0.00 1.00 -0.01 0.99 0.10 *** 1.10 0.10 *** 1.11 Child Presence (No child is the ref. group) Pre-school child (age 0-4) -1.07 *** 0.34 -1.00 *** 0.37 -0.16 0.86 -0.18 0.84 Child age 5-17 -0.95 *** 0.39 -0.85 *** 0.43 -0.06 0.95 -0.05 0.95 Generational Status (Native-born Non-Hispanic White is the ref. group) Gen. 1st
0-4 years in the U.S. -1.11 *** 0.33 -1.78 *** 0.17 -0.81 *** 0.44 -1.35 *** 0.26 5-9 years in the U.S. -1.15 *** 0.32 -1.85 *** 0.16 -0.71 *** 0.49 -1.45 *** 0.23 10+ years in the U.S. -0.83 *** 0.44 -1.57 *** 0.21 -0.61 *** 0.55 -1.45 *** 0.23 Gen. 1.25 -1.47 *** 0.23 -0.93 *** 0.39 -1.30 *** 0.27 -0.88 *** 0.41 Gen. 1.5 -1.98 *** 0.14 -0.83 * 0.44 -2.08 *** 0.13 -1.07 ** 0.34 Gen. 1.75 -2.00 *** 0.14 -0.64 0.53 -1.67 *** 0.19 -0.41 0.67 Gen. 2.0 -1.03 *** 0.36 -1.08 *** 0.34 -0.89 *** 0.41 -1.14 *** 0.32 Gen. 2.5 -1.06 *** 0.35 -0.76 *** 0.47 -1.04 *** 0.36 -0.89 *** 0.41 2 R G 0.06 0.02 0.08 0.05 0.01 0.08 2 R GMC 0.16 0.05 0.22 0.13 0.03 0.19 2 Modelχ 1042.98 295.37 1475.07 991.79 263.92 1469.40 *p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001. OR: Odds Ratio. Sources: 5% US 2000 PUMS.
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Table 6.4 Logistic Regression Models of Marital Dissolution among Chinese Immigrants and Native-born Non-Hispanic Whites with a College Education or More, 2000. Male (N=29,552) Female (N=29,112) Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log Odds OR Log OddsOR OR Log Odds Log Odds OR
Intercept -13.65 -2.31 -12.48 -11.44 -2.01 -11.08 Age 0.51 *** 1.66 0.49 *** 1.63 0.33 *** 1.40 0.34 *** 1.40 Age square -0.01 *** 1.00 -0.01 *** 1.00 0.00 *** 1.00 0.00 *** 1.00 Log of Personal Income -0.02 0.98 -0.04 *** 0.96 0.13 *** 1.14 0.13 *** 1.14 Child Presence (No child is the ref. group) Pre-school child (age 0-4) -2.19 *** 0.11 -2.14 *** 0.12 -1.18 *** 0.31 -1.16 *** 0.31 Child age 5-17 -1.69 *** 0.18 -1.63 *** 0.20 -0.33 *** 0.72 -0.31 *** 0.74 Generational Status (Native-born Non-Hispanic White is the ref. group) Gen. 1st 0-4 years in the U.S. -1.37 *** 0.25 -0.95 *** 0.39 -1.11 *** 0.33 -0.180.84 5-9 years in the U.S. -1.11 *** 0.33 -0.73 *** 0.48 -1.04 *** 0.35 -0.53 *** 0.59 10+ years in the U.S. -0.78 *** 0.46 -0.79 *** 0.45 -0.39 *** 0.67 -0.56 *** 0.57 Gen. 1.25 -1.08 *** 0.34 -0.69 *** 0.50 -1.16 *** 0.32 -0.74 *** 0.48 Gen. 1.5 -1.18 *** 0.31 -0.71 *** 0.49 -1.21 *** 0.30 -0.62 *** 0.54 Gen. 1.75 -1.23 *** 0.29 -0.75 ** 0.48 -1.03 *** 0.36 -0.55 ** 0.58 Gen. 2.0 -0.96 *** 0.38 -0.73 *** 0.48 -0.86 *** 0.43 -0.62 *** 0.54 Gen. 2.5 -0.48 *** 0.62 -0.23 † 0.79 -0.51 *** 0.60 -0.27 * 0.76 2 RG 0.04 0.01 0.05 0.05 0.01 0.05 2 RGMC 0.13 0.03 0.15 0.12 0.03 0.13 2 Modelχ 1354.36 345.72 1542.36 1475.56 373.82 1622.61 *p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001. OR: Odds Ratio. Sources: 5% US 2000 PUMS. 110 degree or above as compared to 24 percent of the native-born non-Hispanic White women. In terms of personal income, native-born non-Hispanic White men have the highest mean income and native-born non-Hispanic White women have the lowest among the four groups. These descriptive statistics signify that immigrant Chinese are not only a selected group of people who do not resemble average mainland Chinese, but are also different from average native-born non-
Hispanic Whites as well.
Table 6.2 presents the logistic regression models of being divorced or separated by gender for 83,459 Chinese and native-born non-Hispanic White men and 87,840 Chinese and native-born non-Hispanic White women (all ever-married adults aged 1521 to 65) in the year of
2000. Native-born non-Hispanic Whites are the baseline comparison group. Model 1 illustrates the effects of demographic variables, including age, age square, education variables in categories, personal income and the presence of child(ren) on the odds of being divorced/separated. Model 2 tests the effects of generation and length of stay on the odds of being divorced/separated, and Model 3 includes all of the focus and control variables together.
As indicated by Model 1 for both genders, having a high school education magnified the odds of being divorced or separated by 142 percent for men and 121 percent for women as compared to people with less than a high school education. On the other hand, having a college degree or above lowered the odds of being divorced or separated for both genders for about 30-40 percent, and this effect remained significant in Model 3, when including the generational status variables.
Overall in Table 6.2, there was no evidence to support the assimilation hypothesis as marital dissolution rates among Chinese immigrants in the U.S. did not seem to increase over the length of their stay or over generations as expected. After taking the demographic controls into consideration, the log odds were minimized, and the odds of being divorced or separated among
21 The reason for using “15” as a cutoff point was explained earlier in chapter 4. 111
the Chinese immigrants were much closer to the odds of native-born non-Hispanic Whites, as illustrated by comparing Model 2 to Model 3, with the exception of first-generation Chinese who have been in the U.S. for over 10 years. While Mexican-origin groups have been shown to be similar to those of native-born non-Hispanic Whites in marital dissolution rates among the second- and third- or later generation (Bean et al. 1996), there is only some weak evidence for assimilation hypothesis among Chinese American men over the generations, as indicated by the modest but slightly increasing trend of odds of being divorced/separated across generations.
However, the same pattern did not exist among Chinese American women.
6.2 Testing for Segmented Assimilation Hypothesis (Hypothesis 5)
Hypothesis 5 or the Segmented Assimilation Hypothesis in this study states that Changes in marital dissolution rates by generation among the Chinese in the U.S. vary depending on educational level. By testing the interaction effect of generation and education dummies (the models are not shown), the Nested-F analogs test in the logistics regression show that the added series of interaction terms are significant. Thus, for interpretive purposes, separate models were then run for persons with less than a high school education and persons with college education or above separately, and the results are shown in Tables 6.3 and Tables 6.4 respectively.
Similar to Table 6.2, Tables 6.3 and 6.4 further limit the logistic regression models of being divorced or separated by gender for ever-married Chinese and native-born non-Hispanic
Whites with less than a high school education or with college education in the year of 2000 respectively. Again, native-born non-Hispanic Whites are the baseline comparison group.
Overall in both Table 6.3 and 6.4, there is no firm evidence for the segmented assimilation hypothesis because marital dissolution rates among Chinese immigrants in the U.S. did not seem
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to differ much by education. Contrary to the speculation based on the segmented assimilation
hypothesis, the divorce rates among the highly-educated Chinese were not similar to the upper
middle class Americans, and the divorce rates among the less-educated Chinese did not seem to
resemble the marital dissolution patterns of working class Americans either. Overall, the model
2 2 2 fit statistics (R G, R GMC and model χ ) indicate that adding predictors in Models 6.3 and Model
6.4 improve the overall model fit and contribute to a better understanding of the hazard of marital dissolution.
In sum, no strong evidence exists for either the straight-line or the segmented assimilation
hypothesis. According to the 2000 Census, the probability of being divorced or separated tends
to be U-shaped across Chinese immigrant generations for both genders without covariates. After
controlling for immigrant characteristics, however, the U-shape is less apparent. Furthermore,
the gap of the odds of being divorced or separated between Chinese and native-born non-
Hispanic Whites did not diminish considerably until the 2.5 generation Chinese, which is most
apparent for those with more education. One explanation for the lack of evidence for
assimilation theory is that both the straight-line assimilation and the segmented assimilation
theories may be better for explaining structural assimilation outcomes such as income and
immigrant children’s school performance, but not so good at explaining the more cultural-related
behaviors such as marriage and divorce. Another explanation may be that what the Chinese are
practicing is more akin to selective assimilation in that Chinese attempted to assimilate into the
“good” American culture while trying to avoid “bad” elements in it. Yet another explanation
connects to what Gordon (1964) predicted, namely that, the first step for the new immigrant
groups to blend in starts from structural assimilation. After that, immigrants will slowly (over
several generations) assimilate into every aspect of American culture as happened to native-born
113 non-Hispanic Whites of different European ancestries. It may be too soon for patterns consistent with assimilation to appear among the Chinese; after all, it is important to keep in mind that the majority of Chinese in the U.S. originated from waves of Chinese immigrants who arrived after the Immigration Act of 1965.
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CHAPTER 7: STABILITY OF INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES
The last hypothesis (Hypothesis 6) tested in this dissertation focuses on interracial marriage as Chinese American marital dissolution patterns are also likely to be influenced by intermarriage. As this topic has implications for Asian as a whole, the results include all Asians first, before focusing on the Chinese specifically. The last hypothesis states that Chinese who
are in an interracial marriage are more likely to be in a less homogamous marriage (e.g., greater age, educational, income and naturalization status differences between the spouses), and thus less stable than the Chinese endogamous marriage. However, after controlling for these heterogeneous factors, Chinese who are in an interracial marriage are not going to be more likely to divorce than Chinese endogamous marriages.
Table 7.1 presents descriptive statistics of the couples, which are included in the final analytical Asian sample (n= 2,610) and Chinese sample (n= 447) respectively. Approximately
3.6 percent of the couples in the Asian sample divorced or separated during the time interval they were followed in the SIPP as compared to 2.7 percent in the Chinese sample. Compared to other
Asians, Chinese are more likely to be in endogamous marriages rather than mixed marriages.
About 34.5 percent of other Asian marriages are mixed marriages as compared to only 17.1
percent among Chinese. Furthermore, compared to other Asians on average, couples involving
Chinese are more likely to have similar educational backgrounds; higher percentages of couples
involving Chinese either both have less than a high school education or both have a college
education or above than do other Asian couples.
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Table 7.1 Descriptive of the Analytical Samples. Asian Sample Chinese Sample (N=2,610) (N=447) Variable and Range Weighted Mean Range S.D. Weighted Mean Range S.D. Divorced/Separated 0.036 (0-1) 0.027 (0-1) Endogamous-couple families Both Asian or both Chinese 0.655 (0-1) 0.829 (0-1) Interracial couple Any mixed Type 0.345 (0-1) 0.171 (0-1) White/Asian 0.287 (0-1) 0.141 (0-1) Minority/Minority 0.058 (0-1) 0.030 (0-1) Age of first marriage 27.979 (15-65) 7.874 28.014 (15-59) 7.119 Age difference between husband and wife 4.398 (0-41) 4.413 4.781 (0-33) 4.619 Educational categories Couples with different education backgrounds 0.295 (0-1) 0.250 (0-1) Couples with similar education backgrounds 0.705 (0-1) 0.750 (0-1) Both less than high school 0.144 (0-1) 0.172 (0-1) Both high school 0.335 (0-1) 0.269 (0-1) Both some college 0.032 (0-1) 0.033 (0-1) Both college or above 0.489 (0-1) 0.526 (0-1) Income at first spell $ 8, 105.36 (0- $101,940) 8555.740 $ 8,754.14 (0- $118, 808)10249.580 Presence of at least One Child 0.777 (0-1) 0.765 (0-1) Citizenship Both spouses FB, at least one is non-citizen 0.322 (0-1) a Both spouses FB, both are citizens 0.211 (0-1) 0.778 (0-1) One spouse is non-citizen, the other is native 0.102 (0-1) 0.083 (0-1) One spouse is naturalized citizen, the other is native 0.164 (0-1) 0.139 (0-1) Both natives 0.201 (0-1) Generation Status Both 1st generations 0.423 (0-1) b 1st & 1.5 generations (including both 1.5) 0.110 (0-1) 0.778 (0-1) Foreign-born (1st, 1.5 gen) and native-born (2nd gen) 0.266 (0-1) 0.222 (0-1) Both native-born (2+ gen) 0.201 (0-1) 1. Includes married-couples who were married for the first time at the beginning of each SIPP panel or got married during the on-going waves of each panel. FB: Foreign-born. Source: SIPP90, SIPP91, SIPP92, SIPP93, SIPP96, SIPP01. a. For the Chinese samples, both spouses foreign-born but in different citizenship status combinations have been collapsed into one category. b. For the Chinese samples, both spouses foreign-born but in different generational status combinations have been collapsed into one category.
Tables 7.2 and 7.3 present the hazard rates of marital dissolution among the interracial couples involving at least one Asian or, more specifically, Chinese spouse relative to endogamous couples. Model 1 includes the dummy variable indicating an interracial marriage without any controls. Model 2 adds controls and the couple’s citizenship status. Model 4
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(Model 3 for Table 7.3) replaces citizenship status with generational status. Models 6 through 8
(or Model 4 through 6 for Table 7.3) parallel Models 1 through 3 except that they specify the racial combination of interracial couples (White/Asian, Asian/other minority, with Asian endogamous marriage as the comparison group). Interaction effects between marriage type and generational status as well as between marriage type and citizenship status of the couple were evaluated with additional interaction terms first tested as blocks. Based on the difference in the chi-square statistic of the original nested model and the model with the additional block of 119 interaction terms, only the significant blocks were reported as Model 3 and Model 5 in Table 7.2.
The results for couples where at least one of the partners is Asian (Table 7.2) indicates that mixed marriages, especially Asian/other minority pairings are less stable than Asian endogamous marriages. The hazard of marital dissolution for mixed marriages involving Asians is about 4.08 times of the hazard for the Asian endogamous marriages. After controlling for other covariates, mixed marriages involving Asians are still significantly less stable, though to a much lower extent. In Model 8, the hazard of marital dissolution among non-Hispanic
White/Asian pairings becomes only slightly different (p<.10) from the hazard of marital dissolution among Asian endogamous marriages. But the hazard of marital dissolution for minority/Asian marriages remains 2.81 times that of the hazard for Asian endogamous marriages after controlling for other covariates. Model 3 and Model 5 in Table 7.2 further includes interaction terms of mixed marriage with citizenship status variables as well mixed marriage with generational status. As the chi-square statistics indicates, these two interaction blocks are both significant improvements over Model 2.
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Table 7.2 Hazard Rates of Marital Dissolution Among Couples with at Least One Asian Spouse by Race and Generation Status. Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Model 8 Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Interracial Couple Mixed 1.41 *** 4.08 0.76 * 2.13 0.93 † 2.53 0.72 * 2.05 0.92 † 2.52 By Race (Asian/Asian is the ref.) White/Asian (WA) 1.33 *** 3.78 0.63 * 1.87 0.59 † 1.81 Asian/minority (AM) 1.70 *** 5.48 1.09 ** 2.96 1.03 ** 2.81 Couple Characteristics Age at 1st marriage -0.02 0.99 -0.02 0.98 -0.01 0.99 -0.01 0.99 -0.02 0.98 -0.01 0.99 Age Difference 0.02 1.02 0.02 1.02 0.02 1.02 0.02 1.02 0.02 1.02 0.02 1.02 both high school (both LTHS is the ref.) -0.34 0.71 -0.33 0.72 -0.41 0.67 -0.41 0.67 -0.31 0.73 -0.38 0.69 both some college -0.68 0.51 -0.67 0.51 -0.73 † 0.48 -0.70 0.50 -0.64 0.53 -0.68 0.51 both college -0.89 * 0.41 -0.90 * 0.41 -0.96 ** 0.38 -0.98 ** 0.38 -0.81 * 0.44 -0.89 * 0.41 Education Difference -0.23 0.80 -0.28 0.76 -0.21 0.81 -0.26 0.77 -0.22 0.80 -0.20 0.82 Log of Income at 1st spell 0.08 † 1.09 0.08 † 1.08 0.08 † 1.08 0.07 † 1.08 0.08 † 1.09 0.08 † 1.08 Presence of Child(ren) -0.32 0.73 -0.34 0.71 -0.32 0.73 -0.33 0.72 -0.35 0.71 -0.34 0.71 Citizenship (Both natives is the ref.) Both spouses FB, at least one is non-citizen -0.53 0.59 -0.69 0.50 -0.58 0.56 Both spouses FB, both are citizens -0.85 † 0.43 -1.03 0.36 -0.90 † 0.41 One spouse is non-citizen, the other is native 0.62 * 1.87 1.11 3.03 0.64 * 1.90 One spouse is naturalized citizen, the other is native 0.23 1.26 1.37 * 3.94 0.24 1.28 Mixed*Citizenship (Both natives is the ref.) Mixed* Both spouses FB, at least one is non-citizen 0.89 2.43 Mixed* Both spouses FB, both are citizens 1.26 3.53 Mixed* non-citizen/native couples -0.55 0.58 Mixed* naturalized citizen/native couples -1.38 * 0.25 Generational Status (Both natives is the ref.) Both 1st generations -0.87 * 0.42 -0.71 0.49 -0.91 * 0.40 1st & 1.5 generations (including both 1.5) -0.22 0.80 -1.19 0.30 -0.28 0.75 1st or 1.5 generations & natives 0.43 † 1.54 1.28 * 3.60 0.45 † 1.56 Mixed*Generational Status (Both natives is the ref.) Mixed* Both 1st generations -0.34 0.71 Mixed* 1st & 1.5 generations (including both 1.5) 1.83 † 6.22 Mixed* 1st or 1.5 generations & natives -0.99 0.37
-2LL 1098.29 1069.49 1057.16 1070.01 1057.47 1096.47 1066.87 1067.57 N 2610 2610 2610 2610 2610 2610 2610 2610 Source of Data: Pooled SIPP Panels 1990-2001. HR: Hazard Ratio. †p<.10; *p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001. FB: Foreign-born. 118
Table 7.3 Hazard Rates of Marital Dissolutionong Am Couples with at Least One Chinese Spouse. Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Coefficient HR Interracial Couple Mixed 0.30 1.35 -1.42 0.24 -1.43 0.24 By Race (Chinese/Chinese or Chinese/Asian is the ref.) White/Chinese -0.17 0.85 -2.04 † 0.13 -2.03 † 0.13 Chinese/other minority 1.30 3.66 -0.10 0.90 -0.10 0.90 Couple Characteristics Age at 1st marriage -0.03 0.97 -0.03 0.97 -0.01 0.99 -0.01 0.99 Age Difference 0.03 1.03 0.03 1.03 0.03 1.03 0.03 1.03 both high school 0.46 1.59 0.48 1.62 0.12 1.13 0.11 1.12 both some college -0.01 0.99 -0.01 0.99 -0.32 0.72 -0.32 0.73 both college -0.55 0.58 -0.52 0.60 -0.65 0.52 -0.66 0.52 Different in Educational Achievement 0.05 1.06 0.06 1.06 -0.14 0.87 -0.15 0.86 Log of Income at 1st spell 0.15 1.16 0.15 1.16 0.16 1.17 0.16 1.17 Presence of Child(ren) 0.63 1.87 0.64 1.89 0.59 1.81 0.59 1.80 Citizenship (Both spouses FB) One spouse is non-citizen, the other is native 2.53 * 12.55 2.68 ** 14.60 One spouse is naturalized citizen, the other is native 2.60 ** 13.49 2.63 ** 13.85 Generation Status (Both Foreign-born) Foreign-born and Native Born 2.57 ** 13.11 2.65 *** 14.11
-2LL 90.20 74.81 74.82 88.34 72.25 72.25 N 447 447 447 447 447 447 Source of Data: SIPP 1990-2001. †p<.10; *p<.05; **p<.01; ***p<.001. 119
Scanning across models in Table 7.2, age and education differences between husbands and wives, age of first marriage and presence of children are not significantly associated with marital instability for couples involving Asians. However, couples involving Asians in which both spouses have a college education or above are associated with lower hazards of marital dissolution. Household income measured at the first wave of the study is significant with more affluent households being more likely to experience marital dissolution. Compared to couples who are both second and higher generations, marriages between couples who are both first generation immigrants are more stable (p<.05 in Model 4 and 8); marriages between foreign- born and native-born are less stable (p<.10 in Model 4 and 8).
The interaction effects between citizenship status and marriage type were significant
(Model 3). To help interpret the results, the predicted hazards ratios for the combinations of citizenship status and marriage type were graphed in Figure 7.1. Non-mixed Asian couples in which both partners are natives served as reference group with a hazard ratio of 1. As shown in
Figure 7.1, mixed marriages in general are less stable. However, citizenship interacts with marriage type such that non-citizen/native and both spouses foreign-born mixed marriages are much more unstable than couples who are both natives or naturalized citizen/native pairings. By contrast, foreign-born non-mixed couples had the lowest hazards of marital dissolution. This provides some support for instability of “green-card” marriages or other “calculated” marriages.
The interaction terms between marriage type and generation and the predicted hazard ratios are calculated in Model 5 of Table 7.2. To help interpret the results, predicted hazards ratios for each combination of generational status and marriage type was again graphed, as shown in Figure 7.2. Asian endogamous, native/native marriages are the reference group with a hazard ratio of 1. Mixed marriages involving Asians in general are less stable. However, among 120
Figure 7.1 Predicted Hazard Ratios of Marital Dissolutiony Mixed Marriab ge and Citizenship mixed Among Couples with at least One Asian Partner. non-mixed
5.00
4.50 4.00
3.50
3.00
2.50
2.00
1.50 Predicted Hazard Ratios 1.00
0.50
0.00 Both spouses foreign-Both spouses foreign- One spouse is non-One spouse is naturalized Both natives born, at least one is non-born, both are citizens citizen, the other is citizen, the other is citizen native native Marriage Type*Citizenship Status
Source of Data; Pooled SIPP Panels 1990-2001. 121124
Figure 7.2 Predicted Hazard Ratios of Marital Dissolutiony Marria gbe Type and Generational Mixed Status Among Couples with at least One Asian Partner. Non-Mixed
5.00 4.50 4.00 3.50 3.00 2.50 Hazard Ratio 2.00 1.50 1.00 0.50 0.00 Both 1st generations 1st & 1.5 generations 1st or 1.5 & Natives Both Natives (including both 1.5)
Marriage Type*Generational Status
Source of Data; Pooled SIPP Panels 1990-2001.
122 all possible pairings, mixed marriages involving foreign-born of different generations are the least stable, followed by pairings between foreign-born and native-born. Again, the results are consistent with the convenience marriage hypothesis as many 1.5 generation immigrants have green cards and are eligible to sponsor a spouse. Interestingly, among non-mixed couples, native/native couples are only slightly more likely to get divorced/separated than couples who are both foreign-born, and native-born/foreign-born couples have the greatest hazard of marital dissolution. Overall, Figure 7.1 is suggestive of enduring group boundaries instead of loosening boundaries between Asians and non-Hispanic Whites (as suggested by the finding that mixed marriages between two native-born partners are more likely to dissolve than their counterparts) and the practice of marriages of convenience (marriages between foreign-born and native born persons are very unstable regardless of type of marriages).
Table 7.3 includes couples with at least one foreign-born Chinese partner. The results with the Chinese sample in Table 7.3 are consistent with many ideas developed earlier about the mail-order brides in Chapter 5, where pairings between foreign-born and native-born are highly unstable. As shown in Table 7.3, mixed marriages are not significantly different from the
Chinese endogamous marriage in predicting marital dissolution in Model 1 through 3, even after adding the controls. In Model 2 and 3 with the citizenship and generational status variables, marriage between foreign-born/native-born, especially when one spouse is non-citizen (most likely a green-card holder) or a naturalized citizen, the other is native is particularly unstable.
Cross-tabulation (not shown) confirms that these extremely unstable pairings are mostly among
Chinese themselves.
Additionally, Model 4 through 6 further separates Chinese who are in a mixed marriage with a non-Hispanic White spouse or with another minority. After adding the controls in Model 123
5 and 6, marriages between Chinese and non-Hispanic Whites become significantly more stable
than Chinese endogamous marriages. Even though Chinese/other minority marriages are rare,
they do not differ in the hazard of marital dissolution from pairings between Chinese themselves
(or possibly Chinese with other Asians). The hazard of marital dissolution for marriages
involving one foreign-born spouse and one native-born spouse is about 14 times greater than the
hazard for the marriages in which both are foreign-born.
In conclusion, the hypothesis on intermarriage is not well-supported due to the fact that
mixed marriages involving Chinese did not seem to be less stable as compared to the Chinese
homogamous marriages. Other factors are more critical in explaining marital dissolution among
Chinese immigrants as there seem to be more Chinese who have come to the U.S. through the
route of marrying to another Chinese (or possibly Asian) person who is already an American citizen or at least a green-card holder. This type of marriage seems to be exceptionally unstable,
although caution should be exercised as the Chinese sample size is small and missing cases have
also hampered the ability to make any further conclusions.
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CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSIONS
8.1 Main Findings on Divorce in China
Overall, despite many speculations about rising divorce rates in China, the rates remain
relatively low. The crude divorce rates, measured by the total number of divorces per 1000 general population, was about 1.3 in China in 2005 as compared to 3.7 in the United States and about 2.0 in Japan and South Korea. China’s relatively low divorce rate was also confirmed by
the results from CHNS (1989-2004), a study on women who were ever-married between the ages
of 15 through 52.
Nevertheless, though divorce rates are relatively low in China, there is consensus among
family scholars in China about the rising divorce rates in certain parts of China, especially in big
cities like Beijing and Shanghai. In one recent newspaper article (Anon. 2006), Anqi Xu22, a well-known family scholar of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, argues that the reasons for the rising divorce rates in China are complex and indicates the following possibilities for the underlying reasons: social transformations at the societal level, improved living standards, a more relaxed political environment, and simplified procedures for seeking a divorce. Also, other family scholars emphasize that women’s elevated social status has made women more independent and likely to leave unhappy marriages (Anon. 2006).
Still, it is puzzling that the divorce rates are low in this study as well as in many other datasets (including the published tabulations) from China even though many journalists have reported the escalating Chinese divorce rates in recent years (Anon. 2005, among others). It is unclear whether the relatively low divorce rates established in this study are due to the time lag
22 I was very lucky to meet Anqi Xu in person when I went to Shanghai to consult her about my dissertation in January of 2007. She is the author of several books on Chinese marriages and marital quality in China and is currently working on a Ford-sponsored grant to study divorce in China between 1950 and 2000.
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of data collection on current social phenomena or to the low data quality in China. One possible
explanation may be that many of the reports narrowly focus on big cities in China, while
ignoring the majority of Chinese people living in rural areas or smaller cities. Another possibility is that the relatively low divorce rates are the result of relatively high remarriage rates,
especially for Chinese women of younger ages. Furthermore, extramarital affairs can serve as
both a cause for divorce and an avenue for finding partners for many married people who want to
avoid a divorce, which is especially true for Chinese men. Thus, the census statistics may say a person is married when in fact they’ve been divorced two or three times between the two censuses or have extramarital sex partners while staying married with their original spouse.
A recent Chinese newspaper article (Zou 2007) reported that Anqi Xu challenged the
China National Bureau of Statistics persistently for years, claiming that the Bureau had
artificially inflated the divorce rates. For years, the China National Bureau of Statistics used the
total number of divorced persons instead of international conventions of using the total number of divorced couples to calculate the crude divorce rates. Other than the confusion over numbers, data transparency and data accessibility are other significant issues facing scholars interested in studying family demographics in China. Certain government agencies in China are not cooperative with data exchange, so much of the data are not accessible to people outside agencies.
The low divorce rates in China can also be understood in light of the broader framework of the Second Demographic Transitional Theory which positions China as one of the links in the global village. Inglehart and Baker (2000) concluded that economic development tends to transform people’s behavior in the same fashion world-round, including tendencies toward divorce. However, they also admitted that the impact of economic development is not linear and
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has limits, and traditional cultures, local customs and religions still play important roles in
influencing social behaviors (Inglehart and Baker 2000).
Along the same line, Van de Kaa (2001), together with Lesthaeghe (1986), attempted to
use the Second Demographic Transition Theory to explain how industrialization and then low
fertility rates in Western Europe from the 1960s onwards led to ideological changes and the
diffusion of Postmodern ideas (Van de Kaa 1987). The term “Postmodernism” has a Eurocentric
root and originated from critiquing the linearity of modernism, rejecting all previous claims of
objectivity and universal Truth (Bauman 1992). Van de Kaa’s (1987) main argument revolves
around using Postmodernism as a worldview to explain the sustained fertility declines and
almost simultaneous shifts in attitudes and behaviors occurring in Western European countries.
More specifically according to Lesthaeghe (1996), the two most salient features of Western
ideational change have been the processes of secularization and individualization, ranging from
social acceptability of sexuality to more secularization, from the rapid weakening of social
control by institutions to the rise of individual autonomy and more attention paid to the quality of
the dyadic relationship between partners. Yet, it is unclear to most demographers whether China
is going through similar stages, with demographic and ideological changes interacting with each
other as China enters into a low fertility regime.
For the past several decades, China has experienced below replacement fertility rates23
and increasing longevity, two demographic indicators used by some to show that China is a
modern society now (Huang and Feng 1995). Even though the fertility level in China was
brought down, at least initially, by the coercive one child per couple policy (OCP), most Chinese
are taking the OCP for granted now and agree that overpopulation is an issue (Zhang and Goza
23 Replacement fertility usually refers to TFR=2.1, approximately 2.1 children for woman of childbearing age; while current TFR is about 1.8 in China.
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2006). However, no consensus has been reached about whether China is already at the final
stage of the Second Demographic Transition. Data from the 2000 World Values Survey and the
1999 European Values Survey (results not shown), as well as definition of postmaterialism24
(Inglehart and Appel 1989), speak to the fact that China is still at an early stage of the second demographic transition.
Additionally, China contrasts with countries like the U.S. because the majority of
Chinese are still focusing on material goods and survival rather than on self-expression or quality of life; thus the majority of Chinese still do not consider imported western-style love matches the basic foundation of a marriage. For example, Parish and Whyte (1978) concluded that one of the reasons for the stability of Chinese marriages is because Chinese emphasize more practical ideas of compatibility between partners rather than the more fragile idea of romantic love. In concurrence with the above findings, Xu and Ye (1999) demonstrated that Chinese marriages enjoy great cohesiveness and compatibility though most marriages in China are not based on romantic love and sex life is of low quality. Individual happiness and familism were downplayed by the Communist Party in the 1950s and 1960s in its fight against capitalism (Yan
2003). Thus, the Communist Party always feels “obligated” to interfere in people’s personal lives (Parish and Whyte 1978; Huang and Feng 1995). However, after the Chinese “Cultural
Revolution,” many Chinese felt disappointed with corrupt officials and betrayed by the government. This, along with the reopening of the door to the outside world, caused many people to lose their faith in communism and become more self-centered. Even in poor rural China, there has been evidence of rising individualism, though many Chinese also mistakenly equate individualism with being selfish (Yan 2005). Based on longitudinal field studies in a Chinese
24 One of the definitions for Postmaterialism is“….a greater emphasis on such goals as self-expression, quality of life and belonging… related to a decline of traditional orientations” (Inglehart and Appel ,1989, p.45).
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village, Yan (2005) concluded that the increasing individualism in rural China is a combination
of failed trails of social engineering of collectivity among peasants during the early extreme
version of socialism and increasing consumerism after China’s economic reform in the early
1980s. Compared to the US, where religious standards are much more delineated, in China they
are more amorphous. The Chinese are facing a kind of spiritual vacuum though many are
becoming better-off economically.
Other than these gradual ideological changes in China, and despite impressive economic
development in recent years, China is still a patriarchal society though women theoretically
“hold up half the sky,” a commonly used Maoist era expression which denotes total gender equality. Women in China have high labor force participation rates, but most of them also have to do double duty both at home and at work (Huang and Feng 1995). Furthermore, both divorced women and women older than 30 who have never married are deemed less attractive as
marriage partners. For example, according to the 10 qualitative interviews25 I did with divorced
women in China (results not shown), eight of them mentioned difficulties in getting remarried.
Among them, women who were better-educated clearly showed higher expectations about
marriage and their common causes for divorce were usually dissatisfactions with their ex-
husbands and general quality of life. Though sometimes they were confused about what exactly
they want, they were all sure that the partner they had before was not their destiny. The
confusion was deemed by some as normal since it revealed signs of deviations from unified
thinking (Huang and Feng 1995), similar signs illustrated by many Postmodernists (Bauman
1992). On the other hand, for women of low education that I interviewed, physical abuse and
25 All 10 interviews were with women in China and were conducted in three big cities in China including Guangzhou of Guangdong province and Shanghai and Jinan of Shandong province. Four women had college education or above; four had a high school education or some college, and two had less than a high school education. Only one of them was from a rural area in China.
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their husband’s illicit affairs were still the common causes for their final marital break-up, and
they tended to show less confusion about what they want in a marriage.
In short, marriages in China are most often taken for granted and considered functionally
significant. But Chinese society is in a time of drastic change. The Chinese people are not only demanding more material goods of a higher quality, but also a more fulfilling life with quality
marriage and quality sex life. Thus, as China transforms with great rapidity towards a free-
market economy, one must ask the question: is greater autonomy for political and economic
freedom going to create more chaos in the Chinese family, including the already widely-debated extramarital affairs and escalating divorce rates?
8.2 Main Findings on Divorce among Chinese Immigrants
Family formation and marital stability among Asian immigrants have long been
overlooked. Perhaps in part because many Americans assume Asian immigrant groups to be a
“model minority,” few studies exist examining their assimilation into the American divorce
culture or the way their patterns of divorce have changed across immigrant generations (another
reason for the lack of attention to Asian family behaviors is the lack of high quality data on this
population). As such, many Asian sub-groups do not have a social safety net when problems
arise (Tessler, Gamache, and Liu 1999). Compared to people in their home countries, immigrant
couples undergo more difficult circumstances, such as long separation from each other for
various reasons (e.g., one partner came to America for school while the other has a well-paid job
in China) and dissonant assimilation, which normally happens to newly-arrived couples in a
country with different social norms. In a way, the immigration process can provide an extra
barrier for family stability though it can also be a tool for some to finally achieve the goal of
130 immigrating to the U.S. Thus, for some immigrants, marital dissolution signifies nothing but a marriage of convenience or a mercenary marriage driven by motives other than love or compatibility.
Chinese immigrants in the U.S. are especially interesting to study as they come from a low divorce country with a growing market economy accompanied by rapid ideological changes, and they settle in a country where the divorce culture is widely accepted. Thus, their marital behaviors can be unpredictable or hard to explain. In general, my findings show that Chinese immigrants, especially the newly-arrived female immigrants from China, are more likely to divorce/separate. Compared to women in China, female immigrants, especially the poorly educated female immigrants from China, may feel they are gaining more freedom, including freedom to divorce and choose a new marriage partner, a privilege that they would otherwise not have because divorced women are highly stigmatized in Chinese society. On the other hand,
Chinese men may feel that they lose their status in the household due to different cultures and social norms. As a result, unlike women in China, Chinese female immigrants overtake their male counterparts in terms of marital dissolution rates across almost every generational status.
This may indeed signify their gaining more freedom and having more choices in the U.S. marriage market.
Furthermore, my research examined the relationship between marital dissolution and time and generations in the U.S. among Chinese immigrants. Unique to my study was the fact that I also examined marital dissolution among Chinese in China, which permitted me to test whether there was a selection effect associated with emigration in marital dissolution patterns. Another unique aspect of my study were the hypotheses that I tested, including the selection, abruption and assimilation hypotheses, differentiated by mode-of-entry of Chinese immigrants. Though
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mode-of-entry was not directly measured, proxies were developed based on the characteristics of
Chinese immigrants, including their educational attainment, age of marriage, and year of
immigration. These measures provided the best available approximation for assessing mode-of-
entry.
New immigrants may display very low divorce rates even relative to non-immigrants in
their country of origin as their main focus is to survive or get established quickly (Parrado and
Flippen 2005). My results provide some evidence for the abruption effect among the less-
educated Chinese male immigrants as they displayed even lower divorce rates as compared to
their counterparts in the immigrant-sending regions in China. However, my results also provide
evidence for the selection effect for the less-educated Chinese female immigrants and Chinese
male immigrants who have a college education or above as the new arrivals of people in these
two categories displayed higher marital dissolution rates than their respective counterparts in
China.
According to the assimilation theory, when immigrants come to the U.S. from countries
with very low divorce rates, like China, they will assimilate into the American divorce culture
and experience increasing family disruption the longer they are here or across immigrant
generations. However, the trend of increasing marital dissolution over length of stay and across
generations is not as consistent or as apparent, at least not with Chinese immigrants. There is
some weak evidence for the assimilation hypothesis among the Chinese men over the
generations, but the pattern does not hold for Chinese women (particularly after controlling for socioeconomic and demographic characteristics). Moreover, there is insufficient evidence for the segmented assimilation hypothesis. This research suggests that assimilation as a theoretical underpinning may be problematic. Unexpectedly, the divorce rates among the highly educated
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Chinese were not similar to the upper middle class Americans, and the divorce rates among the
less-educated Chinese did not seem to resemble the divorce patterns of working class Americans
either. Thus, using alternative theories other than the assimilation framework could help supplement explanations of marital behaviors among immigrant sub-groups.
Maybe the Chinese are displaying patterns that result from selective assimilation; for example, they can participate fully in structural assimilation but be selective in terms of cultural assimilation, including attempting to assimilate into the “good” American culture while trying to avoid the “bad” American divorce culture. According to Portes and Rumbaut (1996), selective assimilation does not necessarily symbolize downward assimilation, but can be a result of a tight ethnic community (e.g., Vietnamese in New Orleans) and oftentimes a more mature understanding of American society among the first-generation immigrants, who then encourage their children to retain their ethnic culture or language. While the majority of Chinese labor-
migrants are still living in Chinatown enclaves, the more established ones are trying to move
outside and mingle among the White neighborhoods (Zhou and Logan 1991; Zhou 1992). When
the majority of Americans still think Chinese Americans are foreign and different than Whites,
perhaps selective assimilation is imposed on Chinese immigrants rather than a strategy they
invoke themselves. Eventually, total assimilation may be unavoidable.
Marital dissolution is also likely to be affected by the level of exogamy, or in other words, marriage to a person belonging to a group other than one’s own, an issue that is especially
salient for Asian immigrants as interracial marriage rates increase, especially between non-
Hispanic White men and Asian women (Lee and Edmonston 2005). The importance of studying interracial marriage has long been emphasized by Gordon (1964) as he firmly believed that interracial marriage is a final stage of assimilation and an important indicator for the social
133
distances between racial groups. Overall, mixed marriages involving Asians in general are less
stable than Asian endogamous marriages. Additionally, marriages between Asians and other
minorities seem to endure even greater pressure than pairings between Asians and Non-Hispanic
Whites. However, intermarriage between Asians and Non-Hispanic Whites only slightly differ
from the Asian endogamous marriage with controls, and this suggests that instability among such
pairings was mostly due to differences in couples’ ages, education differences and other
covariates. Yet, the story for Asians overall is not always consistent with the Chinese. The
most unstable marriages are actually between foreign-born and American-born Chinese or
Chinese with American citizenship, which prevails over the importance of studying mixed
marriage and marital instability. The story of mail-order brides between Non-Hispanic Whites
and Chinese was also overshadowed by pairings among Chinese themselves as many of the mail-
order brides were actually between American-born Chinese (or Chinese or Asians who have
American citizenship) and Chinese from China. This suggests that there are Chinese who are
trying to take advantage of the American immigration system and use marriage as a tool to
achieve their goal of immigrating to the U.S. Or perhaps Chinese-American men are looking for
wives but cannot find an appropriate American woman, so they look abroad. Spousal differences in the degree of assimilation toward American culture may also lead to instability in such marriages.
Overall, the gender differences are phenomenal. Chinese men and women differ dramatically in both China and in the U.S. Women are less likely to be divorced or separated in
China while more likely to experience marital dissolution across almost every generation in the
U.S. in both 1990 and 2000. The country context certainly has given women more leverage and room to choose their spouse and be less tolerant of bad marriages. Compared to China, the
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stigma of being divorced is lessened, and women can also choose to marry outside of their
racial/ethnic group while Chinese men face a smaller pool of marriageable partners, oftentimes
women of their own national origin. Additionally, the puzzling findings regarding gender
differences in percentages of divorcees in China is reasonable after a second thought. The
gender imbalance in divorce rates could be caused by many reasons: e.g., the crude measure of
divorce rates, data quality issues, and even skewed sex ratios in China as a result of China’s one-
child policy (Zhang and Goza 2006). Clearly more research on the relationship between sex
ratios and gender differences in remarriage in China could help resolve this issue.
8.3 Implications of the Findings.
Altogether, five datasets, including three Censuses and two longitudinal data, have been analyzed in this binational study. Each data set has a slightly different focus though all data are employed for testing marital dissolution patterns among Chinese and Chinese immigrants. More specifically, the pooled 1990 Sino-US censuses was mainly for testing the selection and abruption hypotheses by comparing the newly arrived Chinese immigrants to comparable
Chinese sub-groups in China; the U.S. 2000 IPUMS was used mainly to test the assimilation hypotheses by comparing Chinese immigrants across generations and length of stay to the native-born non-Hispanic White population. Additionally, CHNS was used to test the curvilinear effects of education on marital dissolution among Chinese women, while the undertaking of SIPP was mainly to test intermarriages involving Asians or more specifically,
Chinese. The overall quality of these data for this research and the comparability of the U.S. and Chinese data are good because only the 1990 China Census was collected by the Chinese side solely, and it also has been confirmed to be of reasonable quality (Walfish 2001). However,
135
this does not imply that all U.S. data are unquestionable. Comparing data administrated and
collected solely by Chinese government agencies, U.S. data tend to be more transparently
accessed and frequently used. As a result, US-data users are also more aware of the strengths
and weaknesses of these data.
The intellectual merits of the study include evaluating the assimilation theories by
offering more empirical evidence in a binational context, especially by confronting the selection
effect encountered in immigration research. Further, this study strives to bring gender into the
spotlight by studying an immigrant subgroup. No one has looked at family stability among
Chinese with a large nationally representative sample or studied dissolution patterns among
Chinese groups by generations, let alone made binational comparisons.
The broad impacts of this research lie in its contribution to our understanding of the many social repercussions of divorce among immigrants for both origin and destination countries, as well as expanding our understandings of the emerging key issues in family demographic research today. For China, studying the upward divorce trend is crucial in dealing with aging issues, housing shortages, women’s issues, and social instabilities that China has to
face in the new century. For the US, understanding these issues from the angle of Chinese
immigrants can inform future policy-making, help clear up some misconceptions about model
minorities and their families, and help create a social safety net for these immigrant groups.
The majority of the current studies on interracial marriages focus on entering into such
unions instead of exiting them. Thus, one significant contribution of this study is that it fills a
critical gap in the research literature on interracial marriages and race relations as marital
dissolution may serve as an indicator that can be used to help distinguish between boundary
crossing vs. boundary fading rather than simply relying on entrance into such unions. Another
136
significant contribution is that couples were differentiated by different combinations of their race/ethnicity and some variables (e.g., concerning nativity and citizenship status) were tested that no one has been able to formally test before.
8.4 Limitations
One of the biggest limitations with this study lies with the data. Three of the five datasets used for this research are based on Census data from both countries. Census data is usually advantageous in its big sample size and is ideal for studying the trends and other descriptive statistics. At the same time, census data are usually comparable as they bear similar structures and parallel questions. However, Census data usually lacks explanatory power as questions included in most Census surveys are general and not designed for sophisticated analyses of social behavior. Another limitation with the census data lies in its cross-sectional nature. Only individuals (not couples) who are currently divorced were identified as having had a divorce even though the currently married individuals may have a previous unmeasured divorce history. Therefore, the cross-sectional measures used in this dissertation most certainly underestimate the percentage who ever divorced, and the degree of bias is likely to vary across groups depending on the tendency to re-marry following a divorce. This could help explain, for example, the gender gap observed in the China data. Also, unlike longitudinal datasets such as the CHNS or the SIPP, where it is possible to define first marriages, it is impossible to separate the first marriage from other higher-order marriages when predicting the probabilities of being divorced or separated with the Chinese and US Census data. Moreover, the exact timing of divorce and immigration are uncertain, preventing causal assessments of the effects of immigration on divorce and vice versa. For example, it is possible that divorced mainland
137
Chinese, especially Chinese women are more prone to migrating to the U.S. to avoid the stigmas
associated with the divorce in mainland China. However, it is impossible to test this kind of
selection effect with the pooled Censuses.
Furthermore, three sub-groups (Chinese labor immigrants, Chinese professionals, and
Chinese mail-order brides) that were identified in the IPUMS and SIPP data are only proxies. It is uncertain how many undocumented Chinese can actually be captured by the national datasets as they are generally an invisible group. Generally, it is very difficult to capture illegal immigrants by the Census or other major data efforts (Van Hook et al. 2006). As such, the modes of entry for the three Chinese subgroups are only proxies from the quantitative datasets as none of the existing data sets were designed to study Chinese immigrants. Thus, the results on the less educated Chinese immigrants might have been different if Chinese who enter the U.S. under less than ideal immigration circumstances had been fully represented in the data.
Other than data limitations, data and funding availabilities both presented difficulties.
Obtaining Chinese 2000 Census raw data was a struggle and ultimately unachievable as China still lacks a great deal of data transparency. As White (1990) pointed out in her review of the divorce research in the eighties, most of the divorce studies focused on demographic determinants as proximate determinants of divorce and considered little the individual accounts or life experiences. This dissertation research is no exception to this limitation though efforts had been made to make it a mixed study instead of purely quantitative. However, for various reasons26, the qualitative portion of the paper cannot be fully completed. The qualitative
interviews and mixed methods may be essential as they compliment the existing probabilistic
26 Other than limited time, the incompletion of the qualitative portion of this research was also due to lack of funding. Dr. Van Hook and I tried to apply for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Dissertation Fellowship; however, the attempt was not successful.
138 quantitative data with rich details, as well as honor the real voices that have been silenced or forgotten.
8.5 Suggestions for Future Research
China lacks high-quality surveys for studying family dynamics and the accompanied individual ideological changes. If the Chinese government is serious about improving people’s quality of life, maybe it should start with not deeming social science research a luxury.
According to my informal meeting with Anqi Xu, family studies are at the bottom of the priority list, even within the circle of the social sciences. The Communist Party’s guideline for social scientists is to focus on studying the seemingly more imperative social problems like floating populations and aging, issues that have serious economic consequences. In terms of family study, the basic guideline is to emphasize the importance of harmony and stability, even if it’s not the actual case.
Though social science research is not directly interfered with by party politics in the US, research on immigrants is nevertheless closely tied to politics as well, and there is plenty of room for improvement in collecting data on immigrants. Besides collecting basic demographic information, future immigrant surveys should strive to collect longitudinal data on immigrants’ modes of entry and status changes following their arrival in the U.S. as well as their change in marital status and educational achievements over time. In addition, qualitative interviews would be extremely valuable for studying the immigrant subgroups to understand their perceptions about the divorce culture in the U.S. and their attitudes about interracial marriages as well.
Details about their marriage(s) either in their county of origin or in the U.S. (or both), and the
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major causes for their divorce will be valuable information for studying immigrant assimilation
trajectories.
Lastly, future research on the stability of interracial marriage would benefit from data that permits couples to be followed over a longer period of time because these populations are still
relatively new and the generational effect may be more apparent in the long run. As interracial
marriages and multiracial children become more commonplace, the stability of interracial
marriage becomes vital not only for the children born in those marriages, but also because the
success and stability of these marriages provides insight into the enduring social rigidity of racial
boundaries in the United States.
8.6 Overall Summary
Still, what all these findings mean in relation to the assimilation theory is unresolved.
Clearly, Chinese immigrants can be significantly different in their marital assimilation behaviors.
The less-educated Chinese male immigrants show strong evidence for the disruption effect and
no higher likelihood to divorce, compared to their counterparts in Fujian, China. However, there
may be many stories underneath. Most of these less-educated Chinese are isolated in
Chinatowns and may have more “make-shift” marriages (e.g., cohabitation or affairs). Thus, the
lower rates probably can be attributed to the inability to divorce because of their illegal status in
the U.S. or their plan to quickly make money and go home, thus paying less attention to the
quality of their lives in the U.S. On the other hand, the highly-educated Chinese professionals,
especially men, who may intermingle with ease with their White peers and colleagues, thus are
more accepting of western ideas about marital assimilation. Opposite to the segmented
assimilation theory, the less educated Chinese men are actually less likely to experience marital
140
assimilation, and the more educated ones are more likely to experience marital instabilities.
This lack of evidence for the segmented assimilation may indicate that marital dissolution may
not be a good marker for studying assimilation theory. Other than generations, there may be
other factors such as mode of entry and gender reaction that can all contribute to assimilation.
Furthermore, macro factors such as foreign policies are also critical to understand immigrant
marital behaviors. Another lesson drawn from the research findings is that generations or duration patterns are not necessarily attributable to assimilation. The research findings instead strongly suggest that incentives built into the immigration criteria for marriage may encourage sham marriages and high divorce rates among the first generation immigrants. Also, the difficulties associated with being a labor migrant may also contribute to the lower than expected divorce rate among lower-skilled male immigrants. In terms of studying marital stability in
China, more studies are called for to study the impacts of urbanization, sex ratio and geographic locations on marital dissolution. Overall, marital dissolution should not be the only indicator for the stability of marriage and marital quality may be more important (Xu and Ye 2002). Clearly this points to the need for future work on studying marital quality among Chinese families and immigrant families.
141
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