Abstract
This study aims to examine how income-based hypergamy among South Korean women affects the marriage rate. In a society that continues to practice income hypergamy because of its traditional gender roles, a rise in women’s economic status results in a shortage of marriageable men. This study proposes a “male marriageable with higher income pool index,” or MHPI, calculated by dividing the number of males who earn more than a potential spouse by the number of females in the same region. Analyses based on the Regional Employment Survey data (2008 ~ 2018) of 16 regions and 11 years show that the MHPI is positively related to the marriage rate. Further, the effect of MHPI on the marriage rate is influenced by local culture and, notably, has not weakened in recent years. These findings imply that a larger pool of men who earn more than a woman is associated with more marital unions among South Koreans, and this relationship has persisted in recent years. However, the industry composition in South Korea is likely to change favorably toward women’s economic power, which is incompatible with hypergamy. This trend would make it difficult to reverse the decline in marriage rates in the near future unless the tendency for income hypergamy substantially weakens.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
taken from the OECD statistics database
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
All datasets from the Regional Employment Survey used for this analysis are available at https://mdis.kostat.go.kr/eng/index.do;jsessionid=lLzeV93zaOmWMQMUVaL60Paag49qZ1WXx0KyD1o3I0IBn4iLVNM12xPfOOZCfSPy.mdexwas1_servlet_engine2.
Notes
As the share of births outside of marriage is only 2% in South Korea (OECD, 2018), a decline in the number of marriages can directly lead to a drop in the birth rate, and rapid aging of the population.
Female hypergamy and male hypogamy are conceptually the same phenomenon. If men prefer to marry down in income, the higher the women’s earnings, the fewer the number of marriageable women.
This estimate is based on the authors’ calculation. Moreover, Korea’s largest marriage brokerage firm, Duo, reported that the proportion of income hypergamy was 76.8% in 2014, based on the data of its members.
Saint-Paul (2015) suggests that a husband’s human capital should be better than that of a wife to compensate the female’s opportunity cost of pregnancy, which is much greater than that of males.
The size of the marriageable men pool affects the duration of women’s marital search and the timing of marriage.
Bertrand et al. (2015) reported that 59% of all marriages are between a man and woman from the same marriage market defined by race, age, education, and the state of residence.
This study does not define marriage market by educational level. The share of women aged 25–40 years who have received college or higher level education is close to 80% in South Korea as of 2018. Therefore, it is not helpful to distinguish marriage markets by educational level in South Korea.
Employing the level of marriage rate as a dependent variable resulted in very consistent findings. The detailed results are available upon request.
Previous studies commonly employed the current marriage market variable (at t) as an explanatory variable for the marriage rate (at t) (Bertrand et al., 2015; Loughran 2002; Wood 1995). We compare MHPI and DMR at the same year for the following reasons: First, the circumstances of the current marriage market are the biggest consideration when couples decide to marry, even when they have been dating for a long time. South Korean couples are reported to spend 3–4 months preparing for their weddings. Thus, there is no large time gap between the decision to marry and the actual wedding. Second, the MHPI for the prior year can be outdated because, in the context of South Korea, many changes in peoples’ economic status occur at the end of year. South Korean businesses and public companies generally conduct recruitment at the end of the year. In addition, many companies adjust their employees’ salaries retroactively at the end of the year after signing the labor-management agreement. The RES data we used are as of October of each year. Therefore, the MHPI at t-1 may actually reflect the economic conditions from the previous 1 or 2 years. Third, we consider the possibility that marriage behaviors are forward looking. For instance, if couples expect the male’s economic power to improve in the near future, they are likely to decide to marry soon.
After the size of marriageable men pool is accounted for, the remaining portion of the male-to-female population ratio reflects the size of the unmarriageable men’s pool. Thus, the ratio would be negatively related to the marriage rate. The negative correlation between the gender ratio and marriage rate (after controlling for the probability that a man’s income exceeds that of a woman) has been reported in previous studies (e.g., Bertrand et al., 2015).
As the marriage rate takes values between 0 and 1, the increase in marriage rate by 0.014 means an increase of 1.4 percentage points.
The possibility of reverse causality (marriage rate → MHPI) cannot be excluded if more marriages in the region leave high-income males and low-income females unmarried, further leading to the higher MHPI. However, considering marriage behaviors in reality, this is very unlikely.
In a similar context, the inclusion of the gender income gap (= men’s average income – women’s average income) results in consistent findings (Appendix Table 8).
Marriage rate can be an autoregressive time series that is greatly influenced by the preceding year’s marriage rate. However, for panel data with a relatively short time series, when the lagged dependent variable is included in the equation, endogeneity could be a concern because of a high correlation between the error term and the lagged dependent variable.
References
Akerlof, G. A., & Kranton, R. E. (2000). Economics and identity. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(3), 715–775. https://doi.org/10.1162/003355300554881
Arellano, M., & Bover, O. (1995). Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models. Journal of Econometrics, 68(1), 29–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-4076(94)01642-D
Autor, D., Dorn, D., & Hanson, G. (2019). When work disappears: Manufacturing decline and the falling marriage market value of men. American Economic Review: Insights, 1(2), 161–178. https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20180010
Becker, G. S. (1974). A theory of marriage. In T. W. Schultz (Ed.), Economics of the family: Marriage, children, and human capital (pp. 299–351). University of Chicago Press.
Bertrand, M., Kamenica, E., & Pan, J. (2015). Gender identity and relative income within households. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(2), 571–614. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjv001
Blau, F. D., Kahn, L. M., & Waldfogel, J. (2000). Understanding young women’s marriage decisions: The role of labor and marriage market conditions. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 53(4), 624–647. https://doi.org/10.1177/001979390005300404
Bouchet-Valat, M. (2015). Plus diplômées, moins célibataires. L’inversion de l’hypergamie féminine au fil des cohortes en France [Fewer singles among highly educated women A gender reversal of hypergamy across cohorts in France]. Population, 70(4), 665–688. https://doi.org/10.3917/popu.1504.0705
Burgess, S., Propper, C., & Aassve, A. (2003). The role of income in marriage and divorce transitions among young Americans. Journal of Population Economics, 16(3), 455–475. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-003-0124-7
Choi, P., & Min, I. (2015). Labor force status and employment quality, and marriage event for young workers: Applying the discrete-time hazard model. Korea Journal of Population Studies, 38(2), 57–83.
England, P. (2010). The gender revolution: Uneven and stalled. Gender & Society, 24(2), 149–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243210361475
England, P. (2011). Reassessing the uneven gender revolution and its slowdown. Gender & Society, 25(1), 113–123. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243210391461
Esteve, A., Schwartz, C. R., Van Bavel, J., Permanyer, I., Klesment, M., & Garcia-Roman, J. (2016). The end of hypergamy: Global trends and implications. Population and Development Review, 42(4), 615–625. https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12012
Goldscheider, F. K., & Waite, L. J. (1986). Sex differences in the entry into marriage. American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1086/228464
Graaf, P. M., & Kalmijn, M. (2003). Alternative routes in the remarriage market: Competing—risk analyses of union formation after divorce. Social Forces, 81(4), 1459–1496.
Gutierrez-Domenech, M. (2008). The impact of the labour market on the timing of marriage and births in Spain. Journal of Population Economics, 21(1), 83–110. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-005-0041-z
Hankins, S., & Hoekstra, M. (2011). Lucky in life, unlucky in love? The effect of random income shocks on marriage and divorce. Journal of Human Resources, 46(2), 403–426. https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.46.2.403
Hwang, J., Lee, C., & Lee, E. (2019). Gender norms and housework time allocation among dual-earner couples. Labour Economics, 57, 102–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2019.01.007
Kearney, M. S., & Wilson, R. (2018). Male earnings, marriageable men, and nonmarital fertility: Evidence from the fracking boom. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 100(4), 678690. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_00739
Kim, C., & Oh, B. (2019). No gender discrimination before career disruption?: Gender earnings gap at the early stage of work career among college graduates in South Korea. Korean Journal of Sociology, 53(1), 167–204.
Kim, C., & Sakamoto, A. (2017). Women’s progress for men’s gain? Gender-specific changes in the return to education as measured by family standard of living, 1990 to 2009–2011. Demography, 54(5), 1743–1772. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0601-3
Kim, S. J. (2015). Why have marriages been delayed? Korean Journal of Labor Economics, 38(4), 57–81.
Kim, Y., & Yoon, H. Y. (2013). Value exchange in marriage market. Korea Journal of Population Studies, 36(3), 69–95.
Klesment, M., & Van Bavel, J. (2017). The reversal of the gender gap in education, motherhood, and women as main earners in Europe. European Sociological Review, 33(3), 465–481. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcw063
Lichter, D., McLaughlin, D., Kephart, G., & Landry, D. (1992). Race and the retreat from marriage: A shortage of marriageable men? American Sociological Review, 57(6), 781–799. https://doi.org/10.2307/2096123
Lichter, D., & Qian, Z. (2019). The study of assortative mating: Theory, Data, and Analysis. In R. Schoen (Ed.), Analytical Family Demography The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population Analysis. (Vol. 47). Cham: Springer.
Loughran, D. S. (2002). The effect of male wage inequality on female age at first marriage. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 84(2), 237–250. https://doi.org/10.1162/003465302317411505
Lundberg, S., Pollak, R. A., & Stearns, J. (2016). Family inequality: Diverging patterns in marriage, cohabitation, and childbearing. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30(2), 79–102. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.30.2.79
OECD Family Database. (2018). Share of births outside of marriage. OECD Social Policy Division. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/social/family/SF_2_4_Share_births_outside_marriage.pdf
Qian, Y. (2017). Gender asymmetry in educational and income assortative marriage. Journal of Marriage and Family., 79(2), 318–336. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12372
Raymo, J. M., & Park, H. (2020). Marriage decline in Korea: Changing composition of the domestic marriage market and growth in international marriage. Demography, 57(1), 171–194. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00844-9
Saint-Paul, G. (2015). Genes, legitimacy and hypergamy: Another look at the economics of marriage. Journal of Demographic Economics, 81(4), 331–377. https://doi.org/10.1017/dem.2015.8
Sawhill, S., & Venator J. (2015, September). Is there a shortage of marriageable men? (Brief No. 56). Washington, DC: Center on Children and Families, Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/56-Is-There-a-Shortage-of-Marriageable-Men-3.pdf.
Tichenor, V. J. (2005). Earning more and getting less: Why successful wives can’t buy equality. Rutgers University Press.
Townsend, J. M. (1987). Sex differences in sexuality among medical students: Effects of increasing socioeconomic status. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 16(5), 425–444. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541424.PMID3689109
Watson, T., & McLanahan, S. (2011). Marriage meets the Jones. The Journal of Human Resources, 46(3), 482–517. https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.46.3.482
Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. University of Chicago Press.
Wood, R. G. (1995). Marriage rates and marriageable men: A test of the Wilson hypothesis. The Journal of Human Resources, 30(1), 163–193. https://doi.org/10.2307/146195
Yoo, H. J., & Hyun, S. M. (2010). The effects of economic resources on marriage-delaying. Korea Journal of Population Studies, 33(1), 75–101.
Zentner, M., & Mitura, K. (2012). Stepping out of the caveman’s shadow: Nations’ gender gap predicts degree of sex differentiation in mate preferences. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1176–1185. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612441004
Funding
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020S1A5B8103268).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of Interest
There are no conflicts of interest to declare.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chung, MS., Lee, K. Hypergamy Among South Korean Women and Its Implications for the Marriage Rate. Popul Res Policy Rev 41, 929–951 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-021-09672-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-021-09672-5