The Marital Transition Of Migrants In China

China has the largest number of migrants in the world,with the Seventh National Population Census in 2020 showing that the number of migrants in China has exceeded 376 million.While the huge number of migrants has made great contribution to the rapid development of China’s economy and society,it is also experiencing a huge social change.Their marriage choice and family life are constantly under new impact in the process of the change of times and the transformation of their own life scene,and thus various new changes have appeared.The marital transition of China’s migrants has many manifestations,but the most prominent and representative are three aspects: the increase of unmarried cohabitation,the delayed age of first marriage,and the increase of the proportion of divorce.This paper focuses on these three aspects for investigation and research.The factors affecting the marital transition of migrants in are both micro and macro.Microscopically,it is closely related to individual characteristics such as gender,age,nationality,education level,and other mobility factors such as mobility distance,mobility duration and mobility mode.Macroscopically,it is closely related to the demographic transition and the great economic and social changes that have taken place since China’s reform and opening up.At present,most of the Chinese domestic studies on the marital transition of China’s migrants focus on the analysis of micro factors,and this paper argues that we should put the analysis of micro factors on the basis of the macro background in order to better explore and explain the deep reasons and internal mechanism of the marital transition of China’s migrants.The macro-influencing factors of marital transition of migrants in China can be observed in three dimensions: Firstly,the demographic transition.After the reform and opening up,China has experienced rapid demographic transition and population total fertility rate in the early part of this century that has reached the replacement level,completing the transition of population reproduction pattern from traditional model to modern one.However,after that,China’s population fertility has been not as stable as the classical theory of demographic transition suggests on fertility replacement level.Instead,it continues to decline,gradually appearing ultra-low fertility rate,and has even entered the channel of negative population growth.This situation is beyond the theoretical horizon of the classical population transition theory,so the second demographic transition theory arises at the historic moment.From the perspective of postmodernism,the theory of the second demographic transition makes a new interpretation of people’s brand-new marriage choices,family relations and fertility concepts in the new era,which has a good explanatory power for the contemporary social marital transition,and also provides a good theoretical reference for this paper to understand and explain the marital transition of China’s migrants.Secondly,population urbanization.The level of population urbanization is an important standard to measure the level of a country’s economic and social development.Since the implementation of reform and opening up,the process of China’s population urbanization has been accelerating.The urbanization level of China’s population has increased from 20.6%(the data of the Third National Census in 1982)at the early stage of reform and opening up to 65% at present.The speed of China’s population urbanization has attracted the attention of the world.The process of population urbanization is not only the process of changing rural population into urban population,but also the process of changing rural economy and agricultural economy into urban economy and non-agricultural industrial economy,as well as the process of changing rural life style and living concept into urban life style and urban life concept.In the process of rural-urban migration,the marriage concept and marriage behavior choice of the migrants will be almost inevitably affected by the city.Thirdly,integration process of migrants into cities.In the process of modernization and urbanization,the flow direction of population is more from the countryside to the city.Therefore,the process of urban integration of the migrants has an important impact on the economic and social life of the migrants,including marriage life.The process of urban integration of migrants depends on two aspects:one is the city’s inclusiveness of the new inflow population,including the provision of jobs and the sharing of other social and public welfare and public services,especially the inclusiveness and acceptance of the heterogeneous culture brought by the new inflow population.The other is the adaptation of the inflow population to the new region,including the adaptation to the economic environment and jobs of the new region,and especially to the culture and lifestyle of the new region.It is found that the marriage behavior choice of migrants is also influenced by the process of urban integration to a large extent.This paper tries to innovate in two points: Firstly,try to use the explanatory framework of the second demographic transition theory to analyze the marital transition mechanism of migrants,and try to put forward the concept of marital transition.Secondly,try to analyze the marital transition of migrants in the macro background of China’s development.The research of this paper mainly uses the dynamic monitoring survey data of China’s migrants from 2009 to 2018.The research method is a combination of literature research and empirical research.The empirical research part uses the generalized linear model for analysis,among which,OLS model is used to analyze marriage delay,and a dichotomous Logit regression model is used to estimate divorce risk and cohabitation behavior.The final result of the empirical analysis confirms the analysis and judgment of the above theoretical analysis on the influencing factors and influencing mechanism of marital transition of migrants.This paper also makes a simple forecast of the marital transition of migrants in China in the next 10 years.Although limited by insufficient data,it is difficult to make a more accurate prediction,it can also roughly see the evolution direction of marital transition of migrants in China in the future,which has certain decision support value.In the end,this paper puts forward some suggestions on the social policy of marriage care for the migrants in China.