title: Marriage Squeeze, Never-Married Proportion, and Mean Age at First Marriage in China.
abstract: China's sex ratio imbalance and the surplus of males have received a great deal of attention, but measures of the extent of the marriage squeeze do not take into account the marital status of population. In this paper, we devise an index of the marriage squeeze for the never-married population and use it to project the male marriage squeeze from 2000 to 2060. From the predicted population and nuptiality tables, we estimate trends in the proportion of men that never marry by age 50 and the mean age at first marriage. We find that the marriage squeeze is much more intense if only the never-married population is considered, rather than including all people without distinguishing their marital status. As the lifelong never-married proportion increases, mean age at first marriage rises first and then declines.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Population and Development Studies, School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049 Shaanxi China.
authors.forename: Quanbao
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA.
authors.forename: Marcus W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Feldman
authors.affiliation: Institute for Population and Development Studies, School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049 Shaanxi China.
authors.forename: Shuzhuo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Li
keywords: Age-specific first-marriage rate; First-marriage frequency; Marriage squeeze; Mean age at first marriage; Proportion never-married