Study On Effects Of Economic Opening On Divorce Rate In The Period Of China’s Transition

Since China’s reform and opening up began in1978, the volume of international tradeand the inflow of FDI continues a quick and steady growth with a high rate of openness toforeign country, China’s economy saw a fast growth momentum, while divorce rate ofChina was increasing. Because economic openness degree correlates strongly withdivorce rate in time and region, many people think our economic openness policy hasbrought about cultural invasion from western countries, which means life style and valuesof the developed countries has an impact on the traditional ethics and morality and familyvalues in China. This has resulted in the increasing divorce rate in China. What thispaper concerns is whether there is intrinsic relationship between economic opening anddivorce rate during the period of China’s transition. The correlation of economic openingand divorce rate in time and region doesn’t mean a causal relationship between them.Further theoretical analysis and empirical tests are needed to ascertain the influence ofeconomic opening on divorce rate.Theoretically, economic opening can really influence divorce rate. According toBecker and others’ marriage economic theories, individual’s income has an impact on theirmarriage decisions. Mechanisms of economic opening influencing divorce rate are asfollows: Firstly, employment. Export and FDI can provide more out-of-familyemployment opportunities for women and make them less economically dependent on theirfamily. Therefore, they will tend to choose divorce when their marriages are in trouble.Secondly, immigrants. Economic openness has created lots of jobs in coastal regions andtriggered a large-scale labor transfer, that is “migrants” or “peasant-worker”. During theperiod of China’s transition, it is difficult for the migrants to migrate together with theirwhole family because of legal restrictions of the household registration system. In mostcases, men or women leave their home and migrate individually, which may result inbreak-up of family and increase of divorce rate. Thirdly, culture and values. Byexternal exchange and foreign trade, the western views of marriage, freedom anddemocracy have gradually changed values of ordinary residents in China and they haveaccepted divorce more easilly. However, being influenced by particular social, economicand cultural factors, these mechanism will not necessarily function or the effects will needa rather long lag to manifest. Relevant empirical study should be conducted to estimateeffects of economic opening on divorce rate in China’s transition. This paper has studied influences of economic opening on divorce rate by usinginter-provincial panel data from1985to2011. The result of empirical study on allsamples from1997to2011show that when women’s education level and change ofMarriage Law are controlled, influences of economic opening on divorce rate are notsignificant while women’s education level and change of Marriage Law has markedimpacts on divorce rate. That is to say that, during this period, China’s divorce rate ismainly affected by the economic and social development and change of law, and influencesof economic opening on divorce rate are not significant from the national scope.Empirical study is conducted by using inter-provincial panel data from2002to2010inorder to estimate influences of employment level of female and immigrants on divorce rate.For all samples, when controlled other variables, employment level of female has asignificant impact on divorce rate’s increase and influence of immigrants is not marked.Nationally, increase of female’s employment level will significantly boost increase ofdivorce rate and immigrants have little impact on divorce rate. Given that regionaldifference, we conduct regression analysis by using data of eastern, central and westenareas from2002to2010. The regression results show that there are big regionaldifferences for influences of economic opening on divorce rate. For eastern regions,economic opening still have marked influence on divorce rate with female’s educationlevel, female’s employment level and etc. being controlled. Economic opening can notonly affect divorce rate indirectly by female’s employment level and etc. but also has directimpacts. This means changes of culture and values in eastern regions have manifestedafter sustained economic openness in recent30years. On the contrary, economic openinghas little direct influence on divorce rate in central and western regions. Employmentlevel of female has a significant impact on divorce rate in all three regions. Influencesfrom immigrants are only significant in central and western regions, since divorce createdby immigrants is mostly in places for immigrants to move out and central and westernregions are just places for immigrants to move out.