Marriage and union formation, families and households

Despite the spread of modern familial values and norms and the rapid pace of modernization in Iran, kinship marriages remain a common practice among some ethnic groups, including Turk and Kurd. This study is informed by modernization and development idealism theories to examine factors associated with the practice and attitude of Kurdish and Turkish women to consanguineous marriage, utilizing data from a representative sample of 768 ever-married women residing in Uromiah city in Iran. The results indicated that consanguineous marriage was more prevalent among Kurds rather than Turks, and Kurdish rather than Turkish women held more positive orientations to consanguineous. Multivariate results showed that being a Kurd than a Turk was strongly associated with the likelihood of practicing kinship marriage and having positive attitudes to consanguineous marriage, while the levels of modernization and development idealism showed no or weak association. The results suggest that ethnic belonging can reinforce consanguineous marriage regardless of being modernized or holding modern development ideals.

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.

The role of first marriage in population dynamics is significant, given the close link between nuptiality and demographic behavior. China’s first marriage pattern has undergone some transformations as the country experiences substantial socioeconomic restructuring over the past three decades. Constructing the nuptiality table as an analytical instrument, this paper establishes important measures that can serve as a multi-dimensional barometer with which one can explore and evaluate the new developments of China’s first marriage pattern. Our analysis reveals that China remains as a universal-marriage society despite a steady rise of the age at first marriage. However, a certain share of people is forced to remain single at their life time. Chinese men seem to not enjoy advantages over women in the processes of marital formation and sustainability, despite China is regarded as a male-dominant society. Furthermore, gender disparity in first marriages is reduced, though increasing gender inequality in China has been widely reported. Findings in this paper can serve as the departing point when further analyzing research and policy implications of new developments in the first marriage pattern.

The increase in the proportion of children born to cohabiters is usually taken as a sign that societies have reached a stage in the family formation processes where cohabitation is a legitimate alternative to marriage, which is losing importance as an institution. Recent research in Europe has shown that marriage usually takes places among unmarried people in the years that follow the birth of a child, indicating that marriage is being postponed, but it is still the preferred setting for childrearing. This paper analyzes the case of Chile, where the proportion of children born to unmarried mothers is about 70 percent, whereas cohabitation is less than 20 percent. The paper ask whether Chile is the scenery for the same type of union transitions that are being observed in Europe, which may explain the contradiction between the proportion of children born outside of marriage and the proportion of cohabiters

Qatar has experienced spectacular economic growth over the past decade. Between 2004 and 2010, real GDP grew by an annual average of around 16.2%, and over this period Qatar’s economy grew faster than any other. Measured in purchasing power parity terms, its per capita GDP is now among the highest in the world. With huge and increased revenues from its exports of gas and oil, Qatar has invested heavily in economic and social infrastructure, as well as, in the well-being of its people. There have been remarkable increases in all socio-economic indicators and resultant gains in human development. Accompanying the various modernization changes, family formation and childbearing behaviour are also in transition.

Against this background, this paper examines changes in period and cohort trends in Qatari nuptiality and fertility. Utilizing time-trends in civil registration data and population census data, the paper will review the pattern of changes in Qatari marriage and fertility behaviour. It applies demographic techniques to explain the factors associated with the changes. The paper will conclude with an assessment of the implications of demographic changes for population and social policy.

Thousands of women who are in a certain age and want to marry are named remained women, or remained girls, in China, especially in modern cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Their demographical characters, reasons and results of being unmarried are focused and explained by society. The author use the qualitative research method to locate some remained women and give a vivid description of them. Through the designed interaction between the researcher and these remained women, some general but secret reason of being unmarried could be found. The description and reason are quite different from the common sense. Only realizing themselves and the reasons could they get married. The reason is, to their surprise, related to the attitude and practice to sexuality.

We extend recent research on relationships between living arrangements and the economic well-being of single-parent families in the U.S. by using comparable data from five countries and by examining measures of wealth in addition to income. Preliminary tabulations of harmonized data from the Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) demonstrate marked cross-national differences in the living arrangements of unpartnered parents, with lone-parent families relatively common in Germany and coresidence with parents most common in Korea. There are also clear differences in the economic benefits that single parents derive from coresidence with parents, which are most pronounced in Korea and relatively limited in the U.S. Findings from this project will have implications for understanding the ways in which demographic change and living arrangements contribute to differences in levels and trends in income and wealth accumulation across countries and in comparison to the United States.

We examine the role of intergenerational coresidence in shaping the economic well-being of single mothers in Japan. Using data from a large national survey, we begin by demonstrating that the “official” poverty rate for single mothers (which is based on those living alone) overstates the poverty rate of all single mothers by about 50%. We then show that the poverty rate of mothers would have declined if the prevalence and poverty rates of single-mother families had not increased in recent years. Finally, we demonstrate that 90% of single-mothers coresiding with parents would fall below the poverty line without the shared income of parents and show that public income support plays a very small role in limiting poverty among single-mothers. These results have important implications for understanding poverty and inequality in Japan and other countries like the U.S. where public support for families is limited and intergenerational coresidence is relatively common.

The rising cost of marriage in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has recently received a considerable amount of attention in both academic and policy circles. Much of this discussion has focused on the challenges young men in MENA face in accumulating sufficient funds to marry, whereas relatively little research has focused on women’s contributions to the costs of marriage and how these may affect their marriage outcomes. In order to address this gap, in this paper I use a rich dataset from Egypt to examine the relationship between women's participation in wage work prior to marriage and two key marriage outcomes: women's and their families' contributions to total marriage costs, and the timing of marriage. The results indicate that women’s employment prior to marriage is associated with the bride's side, and particularly the bride herself, contributing a greater percentage of the total COM without this contribution leading to any return in terms of speeding up the marriage process. The key question raised by this study is therefore whether contributing a greater percentage of the COM is seen to bring women other benefits in marriage, or whether working women are in fact disadvantaged on the marriage market.

Children that are born throughout Europe and other industrialised countries are increasingly likely to have parents that are cohabiting without being married. The increase in childbearing in cohabitation raises the question of the role of marriage in the childbearing process. When marriage is no longer the conventional form of union formation based on social norms and values people may be marrying for other reasons. Thus, marriage may mark a new stage in couples’ relationships and may symbolize a distinction from cohabitation. The aim of this paper is to examine the meaning of marriage in the childbearing process in Norway. Cohabitation is widespread in Norway and is therefore an interesting case. Norway is a country where cohabitation is highly accepted and it has become a social norm that co-residential unions starts as cohabitation. Using focus group research, we identify norms or ideas about marriage and childbearing and we ask whether marriage has been is primarily a union of choice and more easily understood as individualized behaviour.