Residential concentration and marital behaviors of Muslim Chinese

Abstract

This article examines how the marital behaviors of Hui Muslims respond to varying residential concentrations of Hui. Specifically, the marriage patterns indicating responses to local demographic availability of marriageable Hui and adherence to two Islamic norms – universal marriage and endogamy – were explored. Marriage market conditions were measured by local concentrations of Hui and we estimate discrete-time hazard models of marital outcomes using the China 2005 1% inter-census survey. The results show that in places with higher Hui concentrations, Hui tend to have higher marriage rates, to marry earlier, and to marry more endogamously. Conditional on being married, the logged odds of exogamy over endogamy are significantly lower in places with higher Hui concentrations; nevertheless, if exogamy is treated as an alternative to being single, the coefficient of the logged odds of exogamy over being single is significantly negative only for women. This suggests coexistence and competition between the two Islamic norms. Moreover, women have consistently higher marriage rates than men, regardless of Hui concentration. This suggests that women are universally more strictly constrained by the norm of universal marriage than men are. However, men show more variation in marriage rates, suggesting that they are more responsive to changes in Hui concentrations. Men and women are equally restricted by the norm of endogamy.