The Way of Acquaintance and Marital Stability:An Event History Study Based on CFPS Data
The high divorce rate in China has attracted widespread attention from all walks of life,and the impact of couple acquaintance way on marital stability needs to be further explored.In the current context of free-love style as the mainstream of marriage matching,the study and workplace fields have become the two most important fields for marriage-able individuals to recognize potential partners in the marriage market,and thus meeting at school or workplace has be-come the main way for couples to meet each other.Based on the data from the 2010～2018 five-period China Family Panel Studies(CFPS),the article uses event history analysis to study the impact of the two types of acquaintance on mar-ital stability,namely,"acquaintance at school"and"acquaintance at workplace".The study found that:(1)the marital stability of"acquaintance at school"is significantly higher than that of"acquaintance at workplace",and the divorce risk of the former is about 39.043%of that of the latter;(2)The peak of divorce risk for"acquaintance at workplace"oc-curs earlier,about 7 years after marriage,while the peak for"acquaintance at school"occurs at about 13 years;(3)In terms of educational attainment,marital stability is higher in the"acquaintance at school"group than in the"acquain-tance at workplace"group,with the risk of divorce in the former being about 45.611%of that in the latter,while no such difference exists in the low-education group;(4)In terms of birth cohort,the utility of acquaintance way on marital sta-bility is significant and relatively robust across different birth cohort groups.Based on theoretical and empirical analyses,the article presents the effects of different ways of meeting couples on marital stability,and the discussion focuses on the dimension of marital stability.However,stable marriages are not necessarily satisfying and happy marriages.Therefore,the findings do not represent the level of marital well-being of"acquaintance at school"or"acquaintance at workplace"and should not be taken as evidence to encourage the search for specific categories of partners.
The Way of AcquaintanceMarital StabilityDivorce RiskEvent History Analysis
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
