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Modeling a Marriage Squeeze

Modeling a Marriage Squeeze. Cristina B., Chris Glazner , Nathan Wang, Cristina M. Marriage as a process. At any certain point in time, a number of males and females look for a marriage partner.

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Modeling a Marriage Squeeze

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  1. Modeling a Marriage Squeeze Cristina B., Chris Glazner, Nathan Wang, Cristina M.

  2. Marriage as a process • At any certain point in time, a number of males and females look for a marriage partner. • Marriage matching is not a random, but a constrained process optimization with the future chosen partner being the one maximizing the constraints imposed.

  3. Marriage as a system • In a society with low level of social change, marriage patterns change very little from one year to another in terms of: • Age at first marriage • Percentage of women married by age 45 • Husband/ wife age patterns (difference in age between husband and wife) • If a consistent pattern of change in marriage is observed, this is interpreted as a sign of ideational change (Lesthaeghe 1983)

  4. Marriage as a process • Men and women look for mates with certain characteristics such as • age • education • Income • health status • ethnicity/race; • Income • but they have to choose their partners from a defined array of available choices

  5. Marriage as a process • Nuptiality patterns observed in a certain population at a particular point in time can then be then described as the result of two components (Schoen, 1981): • marriage preferences (degrees of attraction between males and females from certain age, educational, racial, ethnic groups • availability of partners within these groups

  6. Problem • The general perspective in demography is that attraction forces are fixed/constant (Schoen 1988) • Some disagree: they think that at least some of these attraction forces are flexible within certain limits (Ni Bhrolchain 2001) • Ex. Although most women in a population marry men who are 1-3 years older, this is a result of meeting opportunities, not forces of attraction.

  7. Test case: marriage squeeze • Generally, the number of men and women looking for a partner is balanced because the number of births increases or decreases slowly most of the time (Keilman 1985). • When the availability of partners in some groups is restricted (Schoen 1988), a marriage squeeze occurs.

  8. Marriage squeeze factors • War (large number of marriage age men are killed) • Immigration and emigration (an unbalanced number of young men or women enter into or leave a population) • Population policies (number of births suddenly increase or decrease leading to larger cohorts on the marriage market) • Education level increase (more educated women on a marriage market with not enough potential partners)

  9. Real life studies: mixed results • Henry (1966): France, WWI. Expected results: fewer women married. No. • Saxena & all (2004): Lebanon, war and emigration. Expected results: fewer women married. Yes. • Goodkind (1997): Vietnam, emigration. Expected results: fewer women married. Yes. • South and Lloyd (1992): US, African American community. Expected results: fewer women married. Yes.

  10. Real life studies: mixed results • Raymoand Iwasawa (2005): Japan, education level increases. Expected result: fewer women married. Yes. • Bradatan (2009): Romania, population policy. Expected results: fewer women married. No. • Qianand Preston (1993): US, education level increases. Expected results: fewer women married. Yes and No.

  11. Research questions • How to disentangle the effect of ideational change from the effect of population structure on the marriage system? • Are age marriage patterns really fixed? • Are education marriage patterns really fixed?

  12. Agent based simulation model • How do people decide to marry a particular person at a particular point in time?

  13. Agent based simulation model

  14. Constraints • Age at first marriage for all agents needs to be unimodal right skewed • Between 80-100% of all agents need to be married • There should be a significant correlation (0.4-0.6) between husband and wife attractiveness

  15. Expected results • With agent based models we can distinguish between ideational changes (changes in the marriage pressure) and changes in the population structure • Age marriage patterns are not fixed • Changes in education level are associated with ideational changes: marriage pressure decreases. Lower levels of marriage are not necessarily the result of the marriage squeeze.

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