Abstract
In recent decades, Taiwan’s cross-border marriages, often involving less educated and rural men, raised concerns regarding these couples’ disadvantaged position and how the wives, mostly from mainland China and Southeast Asia, fared and integrated. Using data from the surveys of female marriage migrants from outside Taiwan in 2003, 2008, and 2013, along with comparable data among recently married women in Taiwan, we compare educational assortative mating among marriages between men in Taiwan and women in Taiwan, mainland China, Southeast Asia, and Hong Kong and Macau. The findings from log-linear models reveal that, over a period of 15 years, less educated Taiwanese men have become much less likely to form cross-border marriages with women from mainland China and, to a lesser degree, Southeast Asia. We argue that against the backdrop of rapid economic development in mainland China and Southeast Asia, the advantage in spatial hypergamy for less educated Taiwanese men has declined markedly. Female migrants married in recent years are more likely to marry Taiwanese men with higher levels of education than those married in earlier years. Lack of marriage prospects among less educated men in Taiwan may become another social problem.
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Notes
Calculations were based on data from the Department of Household Registration, Ministry of the Interior, Taiwan (https://www.ris.gov.tw/app/portal/346). Accessed: June 6, 2021.
The sampling frames of the 2008 and 2013 surveys were registered addresses of all marriage migrants. The proportional sampling methods were applied to ensure that the samples by gender, origin, and residence (cities and counties) were proportional to the population.
The Gender Equality Committee, Executive Yuan, Taiwan https://www.gender.ey.gov.tw/gecdb/Stat_Statistics_DetailData.aspx?sn=lJvq%2BGDSYHCFfHU73DDedA%3D%3D. Accessed: Oct 13, 2020.
Stratified sampling was conducted to select non-migrant women aged 15 or older in Taiwan based on local industries and educational levels. The interview was mainly in person. We used this dataset because it included marriages formed around the same time as those in the Survey of Foreign and Mainland Chinese Spouses’ Living Conditions. For details, see Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (2017, pp. 328–330).
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Funding
This paper was supported in part by a center grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NIH) to Brown University (P2C HD041020). Direct correspondence to Zhenchao Qian, Department of Sociology, Brown University, Box 1916, 108 George Street, Providence RI 02192.
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Qian, Z., Tsai, MC. Relative Economic Position and Female Marriage Migration: Marrying Men in Taiwan Across Borders and Boundaries. Popul Res Policy Rev 41, 1451–1470 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-021-09696-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-021-09696-x