WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

SON PREFERENCE AND THE MARRIAGE SQUEEZE IN CHINA…
Take the year 2000 as the baseline year, and suppose that the
m,x
numbers of males and females aged x in the baseline year are P2000
f ,x
and P2000 with first married males and females P2000
m,x,1 f ,x,1
and P2000 respectively.
Among remarriages, the number of male remarriages to first
m,x,2
married females is P2000 , and first married females married to
f ,x,2
remarried males is P2000 . First marriage frequencies for males and
m,x ,1
females are F2000 and F f ,x ,1
2000 respectively. In a future year i , the
m,x f ,x
numbers of males and females aged x are Pi and Pi . Then,
m,x,1
m,x,1 P2000
F2000 = m,x ,
P2000 F f ,x,1
f,x,1 P2000 2000 = f ,x
P2000 The potential first marriage sex ratio is Rf . There is no maximum
legal age for marriage, and commonly those who are not married and
over 50 years old are regarded as life-long unmarried (United Nations,
1990). Tuljapurkar et al. (1995) fixed the age upper bound at 50. And in
the 2000 census data, the smallest age for first marriage is 14. According
to the definition of Rf by Tuljapurkar et al. (1995), for the 2000
census data, we obtain
50
m,x m,x,1
∑ Pi × F2000
x=14
Rf =
Pi f ,x 50
f ,x,1
∑ × F2000 x=14
One drawback of this index is that the relative numbers of males
and females are not taken into consideration when applying first
marriage frequencies to measuring the marriage squeeze, which makes
the results inaccurate. We illustrate this point with a simple example.
Assume that the number of males of each age in the baseline year is
double that of females and that first marriage frequencies for males of
each age are half of those for females. The calculated Rf in the
baseline equals 1. But since there are twice as many marriageable males,
males are severely squeezed in the marriage market. However, the
index used by Tuljapurkar et al. (1995) does not reflect this situation
since it neglects the relative numbers of males to females in the
baseline year. Since the sex ratios of marriageable males to females are
usually larger than 1 in China, the index used by Tuljapurkar et al.
(1995) actually underestimates the extent of China’s marriage squeeze.
In this chapter, we adjust the index used by Tuljapurkar et al.
(1995) by taking into account the age-specific sex ratios in the baseline
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