Poster session on Marriage and union formation, families and households (1)

Across Europe and the United States, an increasing proportion of births are to unmarried women. That said, many cohabiting relationships are translated to marriage after birth- even in settings where cohabitation is common, such as Norway. Most existing analyses either assume a one-way transition (i.e. marriage to birth), or that these processes are correlated. This analysis argues that in settings where birth triggers marriage, such a causal association cannot be captured by existing approaches. I employ a cross-lagged bivariate regression to model the two processes of union formation and birth incidence, to establish whether such a causal relationship exists, and how it varies across national contexts. Data for this analysis come from the Harmonized Histories, a comparable dataset encompassing the United and 15 countries in Europe, which include retrospective data on both partnership and fertility. Preliminary results indicate that in Norway, birth is indeed a trigger for marriage. In Italy, however, there is no significant effect of birth on union status; consistent with a traditional union formation pattern. In Bulgaria, while there is an initial effect of birth inducing marriage, this effect diminishes- indicating that birth will not trigger a transition to marriage in established cohabiting unions.

This paper examines how resolution about uncertainty of spousal HIV risk – through couples voluntary counseling and testing – affects marital stability. In high HIV prevalent areas marriage may not necessarily protect against infection if there is also a high rate of concurrent partnerships; protecting oneself may be even more difficult within a committed relationship. One coping strategy to protect oneself against infection is divorce. We compare marital outcomes among individuals who learned their HIV results either individually, or together as a couple. Using random assignment of individuals to testing as an individual or as a couple we find that couples who learned their HIV results together were 3.5 percentage points less likely to divorce two years after testing, a decrease of 250 percent. Moreover, couples testing significantly reduced worry about HIV risk and beliefs of HIV infection in the future as well as increased overall satisfaction of life.

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.

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.

Children’s outcomes are influenced by the family structures to which they are exposed during childhood, yet we know little about the childhood experience of different family forms. Using demographic surveillance data from three regions of rural Tanzania, this paper explores the living arrangements of children, with a particular emphasis on experiences of parental absence. This paper estimates the childhood risk of parental absence until age 15, and decomposes this risk into parental death and parental migration. The paper presents estimates for proportion of childhood spent residing without the parent. Finally, using Cox’s proportional hazards regression analysis, this paper investigates the child, parental, and household level predictors of parental absence. This paper finds that parental absence due to migration is more common than due to death, and that paternal absence is more common than maternal. Together these estimates provide a detailed picture Tanzanian children’s experience of parental absence.

This paper presents a twofold objective. First, it analyzes interracial marriage rate differences according to religious affiliation. Secondly, it compares the most relevant interracial marriage changes from 1980 to 2010 using loglinear models. The first analysis focuses on results until 2000. They indicate that when spouses or partners have the same religion, the marriage percentage distribution remains practically the same as the total distribution. However, when analyzing marriages between religiously heterogamous partners, all racially homogamous marriages decrease, and all interracial marriages increase. Additionally, all the model association coefficients demonstrate that having the same religion is important not only for interracial marriages but also for all homogamous couples. In Brazil, the strength of religious belief is highly relevant to unions, even for interracial couples. Religion has considerable power over partner choice. Although interracial unions increased between 1980 and 2000, religious heterogamous unions changed at a different pace. In the last decade, changes in the Brazilian religious scenario and racial composition motivated the 2010 analysis.

As for most other countries in Asia, Thailand had been characterized by universal marriage since the 1960s. However, the country has witnessed increasing trends towards later and less marriage, where singlehood is particularly high for well-educated women. This paper aims to explore Thai women’s perceptions and attitudes on marriage and singlehood, particularly those among the never-married women. Through a sequential mixed-method approach, the study first quantitatively examines the contemporary context of marriage and singlehood, the perceptions of Thai women towards singlehood, gender equality and childbearing, and the factors influencing these perceptions. This is followed by a qualitative study to explore the attitudes and perceptions of the never-married women towards singlehood as well as their lifestyle, life satisfaction, and preparation for old age. An in-depth interview is conducted for the never-married women aged 30 – 44 who completed college and currently reside in Bangkok. The qualitative data collection is on-going and scheduled to be completed by October 2012.

Domestic violence is a problem of public concern, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and many developing countries. This is due to its far reaching social, economic and public health consequences. In Uganda, there is absence of a domestic violence law and therefore the police and courts rely on laws that cover assault and homicide to handle it. Drawing on a sample of 2367 from the 2006 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (UDHS) data, for men and women currently married and those living together, the study seeks to examine the effect of educational attainment, some socio-economic and demographic characteristics on domestic violence.
Respondents with complete secondary and higher education status were less likely (OR=0.918) to experience physical violence compared to respondents with no education. Respondents who did not complete primary are about 2 times as likely as respondents with no education to experience emotional violence (p<0.01). Respondents with seasonal employment were more likely to experience physical violence than respondents who had employment all year (OR= 1.513). It is recommended, based on the findings, that promotion of formal education should be emphasized an important component in campaigns against domestic violence in Uganda.

Using national survey data and city-year-specific indicators, I examine the effect of demographic and institutional determinants of individual marriage in urban China spanning 60 years. A growth in importance of economic prospect has been observed during the rapid economic development in China. In addition, evidence of cohort changes indicates that the positive effect of working in the state-owned sector on marriage formation decreases, which reflects the marketization in China during recent decades. Capitalizing on the house reform in urban China, I find that the effects of education on marital behavior varied with the levels of house price. Specifically, higher education is associated with larger probability of entering marriage when the house price is relatively high; in contrast, education has a marriage-delaying effect in the cities with relatively low house price. Taken together, these results suggest that the determinants of marriage should be understood by taking the institutional changes into account.