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. vi 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 vii 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 viii 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