Study On The Mate Choice Problem Of Urban Youth In The Context Of Gender Imbalance

ince the 1980s,the sex ratio at birth in China is rising and gravely deviates from the normal range.Today,the social impacts have gradually appeared.Under the social background of large-scale population flowing sharply,the youth mate selection mode changes gradually,and mating difficult phenomenon is becoming more and more prominent.From the perspective of gender imbalance,this research attempts to give explanation to the youth mate choice problem which happened in urban area.This research wants to answer these following basic questions:whether gender imbalance would lead to urban youth mate choice problems?What effects would it produce for the urban youth mate choice?How about the influence mechanism?The data used in this research comes from "Youth Development Survey(2014)"which was carried on Jiangsu Nanjing and Hebei Baoding in March to May 2014,and it chose five major industries,such as "education,health and social work,public administration and social organization,accommodation and catering industry,wholesale and retail trade",the respondents are 957 urban youths who are on-the-job,age is between 18 to 35.This study also used the previous census data,especially the sixth census data in 2010.The study firstly described and preliminary analyzed the basic conditions of youth mate selection in the context of gender imbalance,then analyzed the differences and performance characteristics between different industries,regions,ages and education degrees,and on this basis,it examined the directly affects which gender imbalance influenced on the urban youth mate choice by using the empirical data,and then discussed the influence mechanism.The results showed that:From the view of "sixth census" data,the study found that the imbalance of sex ratio at marriage age had four major characteristics,such as industry,region,age and education degree.According to the preference of age gradient,if "male older than female",it may lead to female mating crowded,but if "female older than male",the object of mating crowded would be male.The degree gradient preference of "same degree" or "male higher than female" would lead to highly educated women and men with low degree facing mate choice difficulties.Through investigating the city on-the-job youth mating condition,the results showed that:urban youth are facing mate choice difficulties,nearly a quarter of respondents youth face marriage crowded;different youth groups have different mate selection concepts.From the view of industry,accommodation catering youths are under the condition of marriage squeeze obviously,but their mating crowded felling is the weakest;education industry youths are not under the condition of marriage squeeze obviously,but their mating crowded felling is the strongest.From geographical point of view,Nanjing youths tend to marry at a mature age,and their mating crowded feeling is stronger than Baoding;youths born in rural areas tend to early marriage,and their mating crowded feeling is weaker than urban areas.Look from the age,younger youths are more acceptable to early love;older youths are more acceptable to marry at a mature age.From the education degree,along with the education degree rising,youths are more tend to marry at a mature age,mate choice standard is higher,and mating crowded feeling is stronger.Using the survey data for hypothesis test,this study found that the gender imbalance directly influence on urban youth mate choice mainly embodied in ideal marriage age,mating way,scope of intermarriage and marriage status.Specifically,under the influence of industry,regional and age gender imbalance,the scope of intermarriage would be larger;the age and education gender imbalance may delay the ideal marriage age;the age gender imbalance would lead to mating way alienation and increase the mate choice difficulties,then trigger different kinds of social problems.Analyzing the effect mechanism of youth mate choice,this study found that:under the background of the gender imbalance,family,capital,psychological impact on the youth mate choice has become complex.The influence of family and capital is more obviously on the blind date willing,mating way,scope of intermarriage,and marriage status.But the psychological impact is focus on the mating way and scope of intermarriage.In conclusion,from the perspective of gender structure imbalance,this study discussed its influence on urban youth mate choice and internal mechanism.To a certain extent,it expanded the existing theory of demography and sociology theory,enriched the achievement of research on gender imbalance.By using the empirical method,it gives new empirical evidence on marriage squeeze research,and it also provides some useful inspirations on the deep research of gender imbalance and youth mate election in the future.