Does Marrying Well Count More Than Career? Personal Achievement, Marriage, and Happiness of Married Women in Urban China

Abstract

A gender perspective is basically missing in the existing literature on subjective well-being (referred to as SWB) in China, and evidence of women’s SWB is scanty. Drawing from the theoretical framework of public/private-sphere separation, this article examines how married women’s happiness is affected by her personal achievement and characteristics of marriage matching, with particular reference to class and educational assortative marriage. Using pooled data from the Chinese General Social Surveys (2003–2013), the results of diagonal reference models and ordered logistic regression show a predominant role of husbands’ class positions in determining married women’s happiness. Meanwhile, women tend to be happier when they earn more, but their happiness decreases as they contribute more to household economy. When the effects of marriage matching and husbands’ characteristics are differentiated from those of women’s own class positions and education, there is no empirical evidence supporting a significant impact of assortative marriage per se on women’s happiness. This analysis reveals deeply internalized gender norms relating to marriage and family among Chinese women and suggests the possibility for such norms to be increasingly reinforced in the social context of two-sphere separation.