Trends and determinants of female marriage migration in contemporary China

With the rapid development of the Chinese economy, a very large number of unmarried young women are entering the floating labor market. They leave their hometowns to work in big cities without moving their Hukou from their hometowns to their working places because of the difficulty of such Hukou migration. An increasing number of migrant women have married husbands from their places of work. It is reported that nearly 10-20% of these husbands and wives are not laoxiangs, but come from different places. This is becoming a new type of Chinese marriage migration. Using the latest Third Wave Survey on the social status of women in China, carried out jointly by the All-China Women’ Federation and Chinese National Bureau of Statistics in December 2010, characteristics of and influences on female migration marriage in the floating labor market were investigated at the individual and household level. Factors affecting migration marriage in the floating and open marriage market were analyzed by logistic regression. The results indicate that the couples in a migration marriage have better individual and family characteristics than couples in a laoxiang marriage. Floating females with better individual and family conditions integrate more easily to into the society at their workplaces and find it easier to achieve migration marriages.