WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

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JIANG Q. –I. ATTANÉ –LI S. –M. FELDMAN
has the largest R, P, and M. During the 2030s, the proportion of excess
males to potential marriageable males is around 20% and peaks at 25%
in the 2040s with the annual excess males numbering around 1.6
million.
3.3. The influence of remarriage
At the end of 2000, the crude divorce rate in China (CDR)
reached 1.8 per 1000, among the highest in Asia. Even though this is
not as high as those observed in western countries, the absolute
number of divorces ranks highest in the world due to the huge
population size (Ye and Lin, 1998). Meanwhile, the high divorce rates
are shifting from old-aged groups to middle-aged groups. In 1990 the
age group with the highest proportion of divorcees relative to the total
numbers of the group was the 55-59 age group at 10.3 per 1000. But in
2000 the proportions for the age groups 30 to 34, 35 to 39, 40 to 44
and 45 to 49 were 12.4, 15.4, 15.3, and 11.9 per 1000 respectively
(PCO, 2002). Divorce is not usually an action taken against marriage
itself, but is a confluence of personal, sociocultural, and economic
factors, since most divorcees choose to remarry (Ye and Lin, 1998).
Using the remarriage level in the baseline 2000 year, from Figure 4
we can tell that remarriage of males to first married females aggravates
the male squeeze in the first marriage market, and remarriage of fema-
les to first married males loosens the squeeze. But R f 1 and
R m1 just
fluctuate above and below R within a small range, which indicates that
remarriage exerts insignificant influence on the overall marriage market
since spouses of remarried to first married are only a small number
relative to the total of first married people, which may be ascribed to
traditional marriage ideologies. But from Figure 4 we can tell that
remarriage has a great impact on the proportion of excess males.
is less than P f 1 by 3 to 4 percent, which brings down the 15 percent
of excess males by 20 to 25 percent, or about 300 thousand males
annually.
Nevertheless we can see from the trend in R that the male
squeeze will be quite severe in the future. This will certainly change
people’s mating ideologies and in turn make remarriage exercise a
greater influence on the marriage market.
4. Conclusion
The extent of male squeeze in China’s marriage market in the next
five decades will depend on the future trend in sex ratio at birth and on
P m1