It's economics rather than love, study says
All across Asia, bridegrooms are
increasingly importing their brides from overseas, a trend identified by
Soohyung Lee, an associate professor at the University of Maryland and a
visiting professor at Harvard Business School in the US.
It is a trend that appears to owe
more to the classic rules of international trade, supply and demand and
competitive advantage than it does to romance or love, according to the study, titled
The Competition for Brides in East Asia. The study, for the Seoul-based Samsung
Economic Research Institute, is password protected.
As Dr Lee’s research shows,
arranged marriages have been skyrocketing in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan,
Singapore and Hong Kong. This trade in foreign brides ranges from 5 percent of
marriages in Japan to more than 30 percent in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Although Asians across many
countries have sought to determine the sex of unborn children and aborted the
girls in favor of getting sons and heirs, the decision to go outside the
grooms’ home countries may be more due to differences in educational levels
than scarcity.
Are well-educated women turning down bridegrooms?
“As the gender gap in terms of
college attendance is closing fast, the sex ratio among those without tertiary
education is rapidly increasing,” Dr Lee writes. “I argue that the increase in
the sex ratio among people without tertiary education (rather than the general
population) is the deciding factor in determining demand for foreign brides.
The reduction in the gender gap
for educational attainment has had important implications in the Korean
marriage market for two reasons. First, she says, women with a university
education are much less likely to get married compared to those without tertiary
education. Second, even if they do marry, they are less likely to marry a man
without a university education.
“Accordingly, Korean men without
tertiary education are likely to be attractive only to Korean women without
tertiary education, whose number has diminished over time. Accordingly, some of
these ‘squeezed’ men in the marriage market have turned to international
marriages.”
China, a country that suffers a
striking shortage of brides in its own right because of the lack of girl
babies, is nonetheless the largest exporter of brides to South Korea (50
percent), Taiwan (70 percent), Japan (37 percent), Hong Kong (39 percent) and
Singapore (30 to 40 percent).
Ultrasound and other methods of
determining the sex of unborn children have led to the abortion of millions of
Chinese girls or, more gruesomely, the occasional murder of girl babies after
they are born. The country now produces an estimated 118 boy babies for every
100 girls, one of the most badly skewed ratios in the world, creating other issues
including the kidnapping of girls from neighboring countries including
Cambodia, Vietnam and Burma for forced marriages in China itself.
South Korean marriages between
native grooms and foreign brides have shot up from fewer than 1 percent of all
newlyweds in 1991 to 8 percent in 2007. In Hong Kong, Dr Lee writes, while
fewer than 2 percent of grooms married mainland Chinese brides in 1991, figure
had grown rapidly in the previous decade, reaching a startling 39 percent in
2005.
In Singapore, international
marriages accounted for 30 to 40 percent of total marriages between 1999 and
2009. In Japan, the share for Japanese grooms marrying a foreign bride was
about 2 percent in 1992 and reached 5 percent in 2006. In Taiwan, marriages
involving non-Taiwanese brides, including women from mainland China, accounted
for 22 percent of marriages in 2004.
“International marriages,
particularly those involving foreign brides, are an important factor in the
East Asian marriage markets,” Dr Lee said. “The number of marriages between
native grooms and foreign brides in all countries has increased over time and
these marriages now constitute a significant fraction of newlyweds in all five
countries. Arranged marriages between Koreans and non-Koreans were nearly
unknown until recently, for instance.
This kind of marriage has many
important socio-economic implications for Korean society. Since most of the
brides are not ethnic Koreans, and are generally less educated than Korean
women, the constant inflow of a large number of foreign brides has changed the
demographic composition of Korean society in ethnicity, gender composition, and
labor supply.”
The high prevalence of
international marriages and their social and cultural implications has driven
government agencies to pay close scrutiny to the new phenomenon, introducing
numerous policies to help foreign brides assimilate into Korean society.
After China, the others are
Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand The relative income gap between Korea
and the bride-exporting countries is an important factor, Dr Lee writes.
“This means that other things
being equal, if China, the major bride exporter, catches up economically with
Korea, a smaller number of Chinese women will be willing to marry Korean men
(as well as men in other developed East Asian countries). Moreover, since Korea
and other Asian countries import brides from the same source, Korea will face
severe competition for foreign brides from these countries.”
The marriage markets of Korea,
Japan, and Taiwan, and the markets of the major bride exporter, China are
closely linked. For example, if one of the major bride exporters reduces its
export of brides, then all three countries will need to make adjustments to
their sources for women. Consequently, they will compete against one another
for potential foreign brides.
Chinese men are now saving more
money to make themselves more marriageable according to a study cited by Dr
Lee, an indication that China is very likely to become an importer rather than
an exporter of brides in the future, reducing the supply of foreign brides to
South Korea and to other developed East Asian countries.
The bride trade rather sadly
resembles the trade in other scarce items. As Dr Lee points out, the current
prominence of Vietnamese brides in South Korea is negatively correlated with
that of Taiwan, with the share of Vietnamese brides among foreign brides in
Korea increasing between 2004 and 2006 and dropping in 2007.
“This pattern coincides with that
in Taiwan, where the fraction of Vietnamese brides among foreign brides
decreased from 2004 to 2006 but recovered in 2007. This is because in 2004, the
Taiwanese government introduced a policy of enforcing visa interviews with
foreign brides in Chinese, decreasing the import of Vietnamese brides into
Taiwan. Due to the policy change, Vietnamese marriage brokers found it more
difficult to send Vietnamese women to Taiwan, thus building closer
relationships with Korean marriage brokers and sending more women to Korea.
That illustrates the
interconnectedness of the marriage markets in East Asia, and the role of the
international marriage markets in determining the supply of foreign brides.
Dr Lee used the difference in
per-capita GDP between a host and source country as a proxy for the economic
gain that a bride may receive from marrying a man in Korea, depending on the
logarithm of trade volume to proxy for the extent to which the two countries
are tied.
If the two countries already have
close ties in terms of economic activities, then the cost of establishing a
business to generate marriages between the two countries may be smaller than
otherwise. The poorer a country is, compared to Korea, the more the country is
likely to become a major bride-exporting country.
All things being equal, if a
country has close economic or geographic ties to Korea, its likelihood of
becoming a major bride-exporting country increases. As China grows faster, it
will supply a smaller number of women to Korea. Moreover, if China starts to
import brides and its importing process becomes like that of Korea, China will
import brides from less developed Asian countries that have close economic ties
with China such as Cambodia and Vietnam. Thus, China will become a competitor
for bridal imports against South Korea and other developed East Asian
countries.
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