Duration Analysis of Cross-Border Marriages Among the Chinese Spouses in Taiwan

Abstract

This paper investigates the factors influencing duration of cross-border marriages among the Chinese spouses in Taiwan. The data used is from the 2008 Survey of Foreign and Mainland Chinese Spouses’ Living Conditions in Taiwan (SFMLC), which contains detailed information on individuals, family structure, health, social support, employment, and economic status. Duration models are used to estimate the hazard rates of marriage duration, especially for divorce or separation. Further, this paper examines the effect of unobserved heterogeneity on estimated individual hazard rates of marriage duration. The main results show that older Chinese spouses, people with more children, spouses with good health, and people with higher income have lower hazard rates of divorce or separation. In contrast, the Chinese spouses with high educational attainment, and spouses with jobs have higher hazard rates of divorce or separation. The empirical results also confirm that, after considering unobserved heterogeneity, most estimated coefficients on the marriage hazard regressors are larger in magnitude that the corresponding coefficients in the reference model.