The Reasons Contributing to Delayed First Marriage in Hong Kong

GPEC 5017Name: CHEUNG, Mung (Simon) Student ID: s1000579272

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The Reasons

Contributing to

Delayed First

Marriage in Hong Kong

GPEC 5017 Methodology in Social Science


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Instructor: Prof. Yannie Cheung

Student Name: CHEUNG Mung

Student ID: 1000579272

Submission Date: 15 Mar 2014

The Reasons Contributing to Delayed First Marriage in Hong Kong

Introduction:

According to the newly released Demographic Trends in Hong Kong

1981-2011 by the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong

SAR, the average annual growth rate of population in past 30

years was 1%. The median population age increased from 26.3 in

1981 to 41.7 in 2011. In the meanwhile, the average birth rate

per 1000 female deceased 40% from 1,933 in 1981 to 1,204 in 2011.

The decreasing of birth rate resulted in aging population. And

the median marriage age, one of the factors to interact with

birth rate, increased from 27 to 31 (male) and from 24 to 29

(female) in 1981 to 2011 respectively.


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By comparing the result of 2011 Census (TABLE 1) 1, the imbalance

of male and female proportion tended to be much more serious in

last 10 years. In the Appropriated Marriage Age group (20-49),

the unmarried male and female percentage rose from 39.3% to 46.8%

and 34% to 38.9% respectively. These showed the trend of delayed

first marriage in Hong Kong population.

Table 1

Research Question:

As a social phenomenon, late marriage became a hot topic which

had been discussed through different kinds of television

programs, live shows and public media. Indeed, delayed marriage

1 Demographic Trends in Hong Kong 1981-2011, the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong SAR, Edition 2012, https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hkstat/sub/sp150.jsp?productCode=B1120017

https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hkstat/sub/sp150.jsp?productCode=B1120017


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brought positive and negative impacts to the society. The

supporting opinions asserted late marriage at mature age would

help to keep a stable relationship and reduced the divorce rate.

From personal aspect, both parties gained much more degree of

freedom to pursue own achievement, and assumed the accumulation

of economy power according to growth of age, it would provide a

better environment and living standard to next generation. The

opponent argued the late marriage would result in lower birth

rate; the elder pregnant woman would increase the risk of infant

mortality rate. In long run, it would accelerate the problem of

aging population such as medical expense and limited the economic

development due to decreasing of labor force in future.

Therefore, as part of the population policy, it is necessary to

find out the reasons and their importance of different factors

which cause Delayed Marriage.

Literature Review:

Since some of the conclusions did not yet show a clear and direct

correlation to late marriage, and more importantly, the


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consequences of late marriage would be further evolved and

explored in coming future, therefore, before we go to predict its

impact from deductive approach, we should figure out the valid

factors to causing late marriage from the deductive approach and

these factors should be prioritized according to their

correlation to late marriage.

Even though many scholars had addressed their opinions and

researched had been conducted to investigate the reasons to

causing late marriage, most of them started the view point from

female. Since marriage involved both two parties and majority of

them are male and female, we would also need to cover the males’

rationale. Thus, the primary objective came from explanatory

approach; I would conduct a research to investigate the common

factors which caused to delayed marriage from the aspects of male

and female. Secondary, serve to the exploratory objective, I

would expect the research can explore a valid conclusion on the

priority of these factors which contributed to Delayed Marriage.

And I hope it would offer a logical ground for population policy

design and social policy planning in future.


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In the Article claimed in Population Studies, Vol 30. 1976, Janet

Salaff2, Professor of University of Toronto introduced the Dixon

Model (Ruth Dixon) which isolated three set of factors to explain

the age of marriage. They were availability of mates, feasibility

of and the desirability of marriage. Availability of mates meant

the influence of peers, which covered number of potential spouses

and the types of mate selection practiced. And feasibility meant

economic affordability. It covered not only the daughter’s

economic obligation to their own families, but also included the

desire for higher living standard. The desirability of marriage

could be simply expressed as the willingness to get marry.

However, it would be affected by the consideration of peer group

networking and the burden of household duties.

This model was applied to her study to explain the rising

marriage age in Hong Kong. The finding illustrated that the

2 Janet W. Salaff 1976. The Status of Unmarried Hong Kong Women and the SocialFactors Contributing to Their Delayed Marriage. Population Studies, 1976, Vol.30(3), pp.391-412


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working woman find early marriage economically difficult. The

emerging peer and dating institutions and appreciation to enjoy

various peer activities also caused to the delayed marriage

pattern. Therefore, Salaff concluded that all three factors

contributing to delayed marriage of women in Hong Kong.

In the paper of Odalia Wong3, Associated Professor in Hong Kong

Baptist University, she examined whether the rise in the age at

first marriage among women by observing across many countries in

the post-war era reflects postponement or abandonment of marriage

(Odalia Wong 2003). She argued that the validity of the Economic

Independence (EI) hypothesis of Becker (1973, 1974, 1981). In

Becker’s hypothesis, the rising educational attainment and

employment among women had weakened the rationale for marriage,

leading more women to forego marriage. But from Odalia’s human

capital approach, she just recognized these two independent

variables would lead to postponed marriage but not abandon. Using

3 Odalia M.H. Wong. 2003. “Postponement or Abandonment of Marriage? Evidence from Hong Kong”. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, Autumn, 2003, Vol.34(4), p.531(30)


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Hong Kong as an example, it further proved the validity of this

empirical analysis, which meant women with higher educational

attainment and career attainment would prefer to marriage at a

late age.

On top of Odalia, Gavin Jones gave his wider view on Delayed

Marriage in Pacific Asia.4 With the cross regional data support,

he observed that the trend of being “Effective Singlehood” (Gavin

Jones 2007) had already run ahead of those in Northern and

Western Europe.

The research outcome unveiled that from stand of woman, under the

hypothesis of marriage to reflect welfare-maximizing choices and

risk aversion, uncertain economic prospects was one of the

obstacles for late marriage. Also, education level of woman is

directly correlated to their age of marriage. It identified that

the higher educated woman and lower educated man would be

4 Gavin W Jones 2007. Delayed Marriage and Very Low Fertility in Pacific Asia.Population and Development Review, 2007, Vol.33(3), pp.453-478


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relatively difficult to get the suitable partners. Moreover, fear

of divorce and the awareness of changing responsibilities toward

aging parents were also the factors that lead to late marriage.

Hypothesis:

In order to build up a logical hypothesis, firstly I would

conceptualize the term of first marriage, and then define the

meaning of delayed marriage. The common understanding for

Marriage is about merging of two lifestyles and families,

building intimacy and maintaining a committed relationship.

According to the Marriage Ordinance (Cap 181) in Hong Kong, the

minimum legal age for marriage is 16 year old for both male and

female. The ordinance governed the formation of legal unions to

found families in Hong Kong; in section 40 states that marriage

"implies a formal ceremony recognized by law as involving the

voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the

exclusion of all others".5 It excluded the marriage of homosexual.

5 The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, http://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/index/index.html


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Therefore, the marriage of male and female would be the necessary

cause. For the definition of “First Marriage”, it could be simply

interpreted as the marriage without any legal marriage history

before the current case.

For the term of Delayed Marriage, there were different

definitions in different countries. Unlike in China where already

defined the meaning of late marriage, there is no such a clear

definition in Hong Kong. The Census and Statistics Department of

Hong Kong SAR only classify the Appropriated Marriage Age group

as 20-49 year old. While in China, the definition of late

marriage by Law is 25 for male and 23 for female. However, the

absence of definition on Delayed Marriage in Hong Kong would not

create a blur concept on this term. It is because the objective

of the research is to investigate the trend of delayed marriage

and the reasons to contributing this phenomenon, so we will not

set a strict definition on Late Marriage.


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Independent & Dependent Variables:

Base on previous studies, the unavailability of mates (Janet W.

Salaff, 1976), the rising educational attainment and employment

among women (Becker 1973, Ruth B. Dixon 1978) and opportunity

cost of career and personal freedom (Odalia Wong 2003). Another

study which investigated the same topic in Japan gave the similar

reasons which were the rapid education gained by women which

enabled them to gain better work opportunities compared to

decades ago. The change in value relating to marriage and family

and the increases in the prevalence of premarital sex also

contributed to the phenomenon.6

Therefore, I would choose Level of Education, Economic

Feasibility, Career aspiration and Change of value on family as

the independent variable which would contribute to the dependent

variable - Delayed Marriage.

6 Robert D. Retherford, Naohiro Ogawo, Rikiya Matsukura, Late Marriage and Less Marriage in Japan, Volume 27, Issue 1, pages 65–102, Population and Development Review


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In my understanding, I would consider Education level as a

background factor which we could understand the tendency on

marriage at different educational group. I admitted that the

higher education level interpreted the longer time spent on

studies as a usual common practice which excluded the individual

case of genius who could complete the high level education in a

short period of time. Of course there was no a clear correlation

between the time spent in school and age of marriage. I here

assumed people should first to get economy independence to in

order to build the family. In the student age, the large

proportion of financial support was assumed to be coming from

parents. So, that meant the longer time spent of school life, the

later could become financial independence, which implied the

later of marriage age. When we compared the data and phenomenon

in past decades, the general lower education level in the past

released the manpower from school to society earlier which

enabled people to build financial independence and created an

environment to build the new family. Thus, to some extend there


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is certain degree of positive relationship between Education

level and age of marriage.

For Economic feasibility, it is the realistic issue which every

single individual would concern to plan for lives and development

and it would determine the decision making in different stage of

life. If we treated Marriage as a task or project, it needed

financial support to make it happen. The high land rate in Hong

Kong created an obstacle for young couples. Either to rent or to

buy a living space, it needed strong cash flow or certain degree

of financial power. Unlike China’s practice and the pension

scheme, the families in China normally made support for the

marriage of next generation on apartment down payment or cash

sponsorship, the general young couples in Hong Kong does not only

to maintain cash flow for house mortgage, but also to support

their parents who did not fall into the pension system in

general. Even though young couples planned to get marry, they

needed to accumulate certain degree of capital which took times.


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So, I assumed Economic feasibility and affordability as a direct

factor which would result in Delayed marriage.

For the hypothesis of career aspiration, partially similar to

Odalia Wong (2003), I believe the tradeoff of career development

was the timing of marriage. The more focus and time spent on

career, relatively lesser leisure time would be if we believed

time is a limited and scarify resource. The marriage of two

individuals started from understanding of each other, and it took

times to build the trust between each other, the more time spent

on business that implied a longer time to get the ultimate

understanding and trust. For part of female and male

professionals who were keen on career development, this would be

the factor which affected to the timing of marriage. But even

though this is a valid hypothesis, we needed to investigate the

degree of importance of this factor which contributed to the

dependent variable.


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For the change of value on family and marriage, I would interpret

it into the confidence of marriage and the personal pursue of

freedom. The studies unveiled that increasing divorce cases

generally decreased the confidence of marriage.7 Late marriage

was preferred to gain more freedom and time to search the

appropriated partners in order to maintain a long and stable

marriage. Since there was no research to figure out the

importance of this factor, I would put the assumption that the

change of value on marriage would positively cause to Delayed

Marriage.

In terms of operationalized definition, the Gender would be

defined by nominal measure as male and female. The educational

level would be interpreted by different academic achievement with

the ordinal measurement from Primary School, Secondary School and

Tertiary Education. In the field of tertiary education, Diploma,

Degree, Master or above would be classified. The Economic

7 GIANPIERO DALLA ZUANNA, MAKOTO ATOH, MARIA CASTIGLIONI and KATSUHISA KOJIMA,LATE MARRIAGE AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE: THE CASE OF ITALY AND JAPAN, Genus, Vol. 54,No. 3/4 (Luglio - Dicembre 1998), pp. 187-232


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feasibility and affordability would be defined as personal

monthly income level by ratio measure from Zero to $100,000 with

same ratio split. Value on Family and Marriage as a forth

independent variable, it would be defined by ordinal measure by

asking the questions on the confidence on marriage and the

preference to personal freedom. The given choices would be

ranking from Least to Very.

Research Design:

With the building of hypothesis and conceptualization of the

variables, I would adopt the survey research method for the

topic. Since Delayed Marriage was recognized as a social

phenomenon, qualitative field research and experiment might only

fulfill the validity but not the reliability. Therefore, a survey

questionnaire should be designed to get the feedback from mass

public through Internet and mail. When the data collection period

completed, data processing and analysis would be conducted to

report the result.


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The outcome on the reasons to contributing Delayed Marriage would

serve the explanatory purpose, and the ranking on the importance

on these factors would serve the exploratory objective.

As a quantitative research method, the feedback and insight

collected from questionnaires would be converted from the value

of attributes and then to be input and translated to computer-

readable format. By with aids of computer program, the

statistical result would be expected to draw a conclusion on the

hypothesis.

For the detailed design, the computer-based questionnaire would

be programmed by 30 closed-end questions in the format of

multiple choices. It would start from asking the interviewees or

respondents to fill the gender (nominal with discrete answer),

age group (ordinal with continues answer), marriage status

(nominal with discrete answer), education level (ordinal with

continues answer)), income group (ratio with continues answer)),


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occupation (nominal with discrete answer), a list of questions on

his/her personal perception or beliefs on the factors of late

marriage. I would cover the four independent variables by

indicating the level of agreement on them. The question on each

factor would be unfolded to a series of sub-questions to double

check the validity and the logic of the respondents. The measure

would be ranking from Very Invalid to Very Valid (with 5-point

ordinal measure). In next section, the respondents would be asked

to rank the importance of those factors to causing the dependent

variable. In the last section, the respondents would be asked on

his/her own plan on the timing of marriage and the key

consideration of getting marriage. With the close-end multiple

choice questions, the same ordinal measure would be adopted to

double confirm the validity.

This quantitative research would cover a large sample population

to increase the reliability and to reduce the selective

observation and overgeneralization. It is useful to describe the

characteristics and to explain the tendency of a large sample


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size. Even though there might be the possibility of validity

error, the using of Multiple Regression Analysis for the large

population would balance the error to give an equation

representing the impact of two or more independent variables on a

single dependent variable which would be fairly objective.

Moreover, the standardized questionnaire would help to reduce the

error of misunderstanding and ambiguous brought by questioning

techniques used by field qualitative research. On the other hand,

the weakness of this research method might be the validity as the

standardized template could not get the in-depth answer from

respondents. It also limited the follow up questions which might

offer insights on the research question. And the incentive for

respondents to take action and feedback was relatively low.

Sampling Design:

In the sampling design, as mentioned in previous section, as a

large scale survey for male and female which the gender split was

quite even in Hong Kong, I would go with Simple Random Sampling

method by probability sampling approach. The unit of analysis


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would be individuals and since the format of this research was an

online and physical questionnaire, the sample selection method

would be set as random. The main reason was that the targeted

sample is not only limited to non-married individuals but also

covered the married population in order to understand their

thoughts on the factors to causing Delayed Marriage. And we could

not excluded the probability of those married couples were also

late married before the survey. That meant each individual has an

equal chance of selection independent of any other event in the

selection process.

Unlike nonprobability sampling method which set the pre-requisite

for the sample, probability sampling method would be more

representative than other types of samples as the bias of

selected sample would be eliminated. It would also allow me to

estimate the accuracy or representativeness of the sample. But

once the random sample was not representative enough, there would

be the risk of lack of validity. However, by the adoption of

Probability Theory, even though there is never perfectly random


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sampling, the result could be generally applied for actual

population and increased the conviction of the research.

Conclusion:

In order to investigate the reasons of Delayed Marriage in Hong

Kong, a set of independent variables such as Education Level,

Economic Feasibility, Career Aspiration and Value on Family had

been developed based on previous scholars. Besides this

explanatory objective, I would explore the priority sequence of

these independent variables to check out their importance

contributing to the dependent variable. To increase the level of

reliability, this study would be designed as a quantitative

research. Even though it might not be able to get the in-depth

outcome when compared to qualitative research and the expected

returned rate might be low, the large sample size had to be

adopted and it would help to offer high degree of reliability.

With the wide sample population coverage by simple random

sampling method, the outcome would be representative enough to

draw a reliable and valid conclusion on this research topic.


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End

Reference:

Demographic Trends in Hong Kong 1981-2011, the Census and

Statistics Department of Hong Kong SAR, Edition 2012

Janet W. Salaff 1976. The Status of Unmarried Hong Kong Women and

the Social Factors Contributing to Their Delayed Marriage.

Population Studies, 1976, Vol.30(3), pp.391-412

Odalia M.H. Wong. 2003. “Postponement or Abandonment of Marriage?

Evidence from Hong Kong”. Journal of Comparative Family

Studies, Autumn, 2003, Vol.34(4), p.531(30)


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Gavin W Jones 2007. Delayed Marriage and Very Low Fertility in

Pacific Asia. Population and Development Review, 2007,

Vol.33(3), pp.453-478

The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

Robert D. Retherford, Naohiro Ogawo, Rikiya Matsukura, Late

Marriage and Less Marriage in Japan, Volume 27, Issue 1,

pages 65–102, Population and Development Review

GIANPIERO DALLA ZUANNA, MAKOTO ATOH, MARIA CASTIGLIONI and

KATSUHISA KOJIMA, LATE MARRIAGE AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE: THE CASE

OF ITALY AND JAPAN, Genus, Vol. 54, No. 3/4 (Luglio -

Dicembre 1998), pp. 187-232

The Reasons Contributing to Delayed First Marriage in Hong Kong

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