Women's economic standing, marriage timing, and cross-national contexts of gender
Women's economic standing, marriage timing, and cross-national contexts of gender
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妇女的经济地位、结婚时机和跨国性别背景
DOI：
10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00275.x
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发表时间：
2003
影响因子：
6
通讯作者：
Hiromi Ono
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hiromi Ono
专业化和交换理论的支持者假设，在任何国家的情况下，女性较高的经济地位都会降低她们结婚的机会。然而，一些研究人员认为，只有在性别角色分化程度很高的工业化国家，女性的经济地位和结婚机会之间才存在相反的关系。为了评估对比的跨国预测，我用纵向数据和标准化方法测试了三个同样富裕的工业化国家是否存在反向关系，这些国家的角色分化程度因性别而异：美国、日本(性别差异比美国更大)和瑞典(性别差异比美国小)。与从专业化和交换理论发展而来的预测相反，结果表明，在日本，女性较高的收入水平阻碍了初婚的形成，但在美国和瑞典却鼓励了初婚。关键词：跨国，性别，收入，婚姻。妇女日益扩大的经济角色是在所有情况下都削弱了婚姻制度，还是只在男女角色高度分化的情况下削弱了婚姻制度？虽然这一问题在对单一工业化国家的分析中得到了一些关注(例如，南方，2001年；斯威尼，2002年)，但在工业化国家中，这一问题在全国范围内得到的关注有限。在这项研究中，我调查了女性的经济地位(以收入衡量)和结婚时机(以一段时间内的初婚几率衡量)之间的反向关系是否存在于所有国家背景下(即普遍性假说)，或者仅存在于性别角色分化程度相对较高的国家背景下(即性别语境差异假说)。这是第一个在全国范围内对相互竞争的假说进行系统评估的研究。跨国框架允许对假设进行更全面的测试，允许纳入性别角色差异的广泛背景。由于文化同质性的限制，即使在几十年内，在一个单一的工业化国家内也很难获得这样的范围。选择三个国家(日本、美国和瑞典)进行分析是因为：(A)尽管它们同样富裕，但它们在按性别划分的角色分化连续体上占据了对比点(Norris&Inglehart，2000)，以及(B)它们收集了具有国家代表性的相关小组数据。我将带有适当控制的标准化方法应用于三个面板数据集：美国收入动态小组研究(PSID)，1990-1997；日本消费者小组调查(JPSC)，1993-1997；以及瑞典家庭市场和非市场活动(SHMNA)，1993-1996。背景主导婚姻形成理论的假设是建立在这样一种观点之上的，即男性和女性在结婚时结婚比保持单身更好(例如，Becker，1981)。尽管这些理论通常认为，女性的经济资源改变了个人结婚的成本和收益，但它们在资源如何改变成本和收益的问题上存在差异。专业化和交换理论(如Becker，1981)所暗示的普遍性假设是这样一种预测，即在所有情况下，具有较高(当前)经济地位的女性将推迟婚姻的形成。这一理论的支持者认为，家庭内部的非专业化分工--部分原因是妇女经济资源的可获得性更高--不如专业化分工有效，在这种分工中，男性在劳动力市场工作，女性在家里工作(见奥本海默，1997)。根据这一理论，低效率造成了阻碍经济地位较高的女性(在特定时间)结婚的不利因素。…
Proponents of the theory of specialization and exchange hypothesize that in any national context, women's higher economic standing will decrease their chance of marriage. Some researchers suggest, however, that only in industrialized countries with a high degree of role differentiation by gender does the inverse relationship between women's economic standing and the chance of marriage exist. To evaluate contrasting cross-national predictions, I test with longitudinal data and standardized methods whether the inverse relationship exists in 3 similarly affluent industrialized countries that vary in their degree of role differentiation by gender: the United States, Japan (a context more differentiated by gender than the United States), and Sweden (a context less differentiated by gender than the United States). Contrary to the prediction that develops out of the theory of specialization and exchange, results indicate that women's higher levels of income discourage first marriage formation in Japan, but encourage it in the United States and Sweden. Key Words: cross-national, gender, income, marriage. Does the expanding economic role of women weaken the institution of marriage in all contexts or only in contexts where men's and women's roles are highly differentiated? Although this issue has received some attention in analyses of a single industrialized country (e.g., South, 2001; Sweeney, 2002), it has received limited attention cross-nationally among industrialized countries. In this study, I investigate whether an inverse relationship between women's economic standing (as measured by income) and marriage timing (as measured by the chance of first marriage in a time interval) is present in all national contexts (i.e., the universality hypothesis) or only in national contexts with a relatively high degree of role differentiation by gender (i.e., the gender-contextual variation hypothesis). This is the first study to evaluate systematically the competing hypotheses cross-nationally. The cross-national framework permits a more general test of the hypotheses by allowing the inclusion of a broad range of contexts of gendered role differentiation. Such a range is difficult to obtain, even over a few decades, within a single industrialized country because of constraints imposed by cultural homogeneity. Three countries (Japan, the United States, and Sweden) are selected for analysis because (a) they occupy contrasting points on a continuum of role differentiation by gender, even though they are similarly affluent (Norris & Inglehart, 2000), and (b) they have collected relevant nationally representative panel data. I apply standardized methods with appropriate controls to three panel data sets: the Panel Study of Income Dynamics of the United States (PSID), 1990-1997; the Japanese Panel Survey on Consumers (JPSC), 1993-1997; and the Swedish Household Market and Nonmarket Activity (SHMNA), 1993-1996. BACKGROUND The Hypotheses Leading theories of marriage formation are built on the view that men and women marry when they are better off doing so than remaining single (e.g., Becker, 1981). Although these theories commonly suggest that women's economic resources alter the costs and benefits of entering marriage for individuals, they differ on how the resources alter the costs and benefits. The universality hypothesis, implied by the theory of specialization and exchange (e.g., Becker, 1981), is the prediction that, in all contexts, women with a higher (current) economic standing will delay marriage formation. The proponents of this theory argue that nonspecialized division of labor within a family, as indicated in part by a greater availability of women's economic resources, is not as efficient as a specialized division of labor, in which men work in the labor market and women work in the home (see Oppenheimer, 1997). According to this theory, the inefficiency creates disincentives that prevent women with higher economic standing from entering marriage (at a given time). …