Trends and determinants of female marriage migration in contemporary China

Trends and determinants of female marriage migration in contemporary China Hu Ying, Li Shuzhuo, Marcus W. Feldman (1 School of Public Management, Xi’an Jiao tong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China; 2 Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305-5020, USA) Abstract: With the rapid development of China’s economy, an increasing number of unmarried young women are leaving their hometowns to work in big cities without hukou migration. Many of these floating women marry men they meet at work. It was reported recently that nearly 10-20% of these husbands and wives are non-laoxiangs (that is, they come from different places with different hukou). This is becoming a new type of Chinese marriage migration. Using the latest Third Wave survey on the social status of women in China, jointly carried out by the All-China Women’ Federation and National Bureau of Statistics in December 2010, the characteristics and determinants of female marriage migration in the floating labor market were investigated at the individual and household level. Features of marriage migration under the floating and open marriage market were analyzed by logistic regression. The results indicate that migration marriage is homogamy marriage, which is obviously different from non-marriage migration. Floating females with better individual and family conditions integrate more easily into society at their workplaces and achieve marriage migration.