Marital Change in Taiwan: Is Gender Inequality or Increasing Education Driving the Change?

Marissa C. Wheeler, University of Pennsylvania

The past twenty years have seen two distinct marriage trends in Taiwan: rising age at marriage and increased proportion of single women at every age. Given the rapid expansion of education that occurred in Taiwan during the latter half of the 20th century, combined with a highly gender-stratified family system, both education theories and gender asymmetry theories are potential candidates for explaining the observed changes. Essentially, these theories agree that increasing education is spurring the change in marriage, but they have different views as to the mechanism that links the changes in education and marriage. This paper will present evidence from the 2002 Taiwan Social Change Survey that supports the educational-assortative mating theory of marriage change.