Impact of Higher Education Expansion (1999-2004) on Age at First Marriage in China

The recent expansion of higher education in China (1999-2004) was phenomenal. The college attendance rate of high school graduates soared to 63.8% in 1999 from 46.1% in the previous year. The rate continued to experience dramatic growth afterward and remained over 82% during the period of 2002-2004.

Previous studies have so far focused on its impact on educational inequality along social lines, such as family background, gender, ethnicity, and urbanicity, with little attention to other possible important consequences. Most sociological and economic studies take an essentially individual perspective on this issue with inadequate attention to structural factors, such as cohort size.

The proposed study will address the impact of higher education expansion from the end of the 1990s onwards on the marital behavior of those who attended colleges and universities during the expansion period. Specifically, this study will examine both cohort and group variations in age at first marriage in China in light of the higher education expansion. Non-parametric and parametric survival models will be used to compare the 1999-2004 college cohort with its younger and older counterparts, conditional on other factors.