Abstract

Since the 1980s, the sex ratio at birth has increased sharply in China. Along with more surplus boys becoming adults and entering the marriage market, the marriage squeeze and men's difficulty in getting married have received much attention. China has a culture of universal marriage and high marriage rates; thus the shortage of marriageable women will not decrease men's strong demand to marry, and will also increase men's intense competition for marriageable women. The result will cause a series of problems for the population, society and security. Thus rural men's difficulty in getting married is a crucial problem for the maintenance of a harmonious society and more research into this phenomenon and appropriate policy intervention is necessary.

This book explores rural men in the male marriage squeeze at the macro, meso and micro levels in considering the combination of historical and realistic insights, and the combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. There are two main parts in the book.

In part one, we analyse the male marriage squeeze, gender imbalance and social risk using historical materials, secondary data and survey data at the macro and meso level. There are three chapters. First, based on previous studies on the male marriage squeeze existed in Ming and Qing Dynasties, we summarize the reasons of being forced to beunmarried, social consequences and related practice of governance. Second, we identify the macro social risks and micro anomia in the context of gender imbalance, and reveal the relation between them based on evidence from relevant literatures and news reports. Finnally, using data from a village-level survey, we analyse the marriage market, bare bachelors and community safety.

In part two, using data from surveys of hundreds of villages, we analyse rural men's status in the marriage market, married men's actual marriage strategies and never-married men's potential marriage strategies. First, in considering the male marriage squeeze and universal marriage in rural China, we amend the framework of the classic marriage search theory, and propose a framework on rural men's status in the marriage market and their marriage strategies. Second, we enrich the measures for rural men's status in the marriage market in considering perspectives of marital status, love experience, and experience during the period of partner selection, and find that men's status in the marriage market can have many levels. Third, we study in terms rural men's couple matching patterns of age and education, and find that rural men still marry assortatively, which is weakened and challenged by characterics of the local marriage market and men's status in the marriage market. Fourth, we study trends in never-married men's potential marriage strategy, and find that rural men who are in inferior marriage markets, or of inferior status in the marriage market, are more likely to lower their mating choice criteria, and conduct flexible marriage strategies, to increase their possibility of marrying.