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have you been urged by your elders to get married?

if you're a single woman, the answer is probably yes. chinese-style marriage rush is a phenomenon that targets more women. elders are keen to spread anxiety to single girls in their twenties, saying that they will not be able to find a partner if they wait too long.

however, if their remarks are directed at women living in big cities, then they are somewhat wrong. in modern society, the number of women in big cities often exceeds that of men. in particular, the population of young women in the marriageable age group is much larger than the population of men.

hong kong is a typical area with an imbalanced gender ratio. data from the hong kong census and statistics department show that in 2017, the female population in hong kong was 3.99 million and the male population was 3.39 million. there are more than 600,000 women than men. that is to say, every 1,000 women only correspond to 848 men. among them, the gender imbalance is most serious in the marriageable age group.

in the 25-29 age group, there are 835 men for every 1,000 women; in the 30-34 age group, there are 671 men for every 1,000 women; the gap is largest in the 35-39 age group, with 655 for every 1,000 women. male.

in mainland china, this is more reflected in a trend in the future: beijing's registered population, which has long been dominated by men but few women, reversed in 2017 and became more women than men. the reversal of the permanent population will also occur in the past two years.

in mainland china, where there are 30 million more men than women, and the sex ratio at birth is as high as 113.51, the pattern of more women than men in big cities still makes beijing an exception.

why is there such a pattern?

gender distribution of employment

in most parts of the world, more men than women are born every year. this is likely a natural way of balancing out the fact that women tend to live longer. on average, women are more likely to live a healthy and long life in later life than men, and men are more likely to die from various dangers early in life, such as wars, car accidents, and various risk-taking behaviors.

big cities are no exception. the sex ratio at birth in beijing and hong kong is both around 107. around 2008, hong kong once reached 113. the reason why they have more females than males is entirely because more females migrated from other places.

it is human nature to yearn for big cities, better education, medical care, job opportunities, a broader world, and a more exciting life. men and women have the same motivation, but different places prepare different proportions of jobs for different genders. .

the u.s. states with the most males are alaska and north dakota, with alaska's sex ratio at 111 and north dakota's sex ratio at 105. "hard work" and "heavy work" are mostly employment characteristics of these two states: north dakota has a large number of shale oil drilling sites, and there is a high demand for jobs in the oil fields, and the salary is also high.

but oil drilling is hard work and is more attractive to young men aged 20-29. alaska, which has a harsh climate, is also popular for oil drilling. in addition, it also offers many hard and adventurous jobs, such as king crab fisherman. it is the existence of these positions that distorts the gender ratio in these areas.

in contrast, jobs for women in big cities are more common and "invisible." they are concentrated in service industries with nursing, sanitation, catering, hotels, entertainment, housekeeping and nannies as their main contents. the wages are generally not high and there is not much room for upward advancement, so people rarely care about the "competition" of women in these positions. advantages".

however, these positions provide a place for female workers with low education and low skills, and their number is enough to bias the employment gender distribution in big cities towards women. especially in those developed areas where industrial upgrading has exceeded a certain limit, the demand for "strong labor" in the secondary industry has shrunk, while the various services in the tertiary industry are both large-scale and rich, which will make employment in big cities more feminine.

go to university in a big city

the spread of university education is also a factor affecting the gender ratio in big cities. universities are concentrated in large cities, and women do better than men at seizing educational opportunities.

in iceland, there are twice as many female students as male students in school. in the uk, 80,000 more domestic students applied to university in 2014 than boys.

in the 1970s, the proportion of american men (58%) who went to college was much higher than that of women (42%). now the proportions are almost completely reversed. according to the u.s. department of education, the proportion of women on college campuses nationwide will exceed 56% in 2017. the gender gap is even wider among students from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds—more than 60 percent of african-american and hispanic students at uc davis are women.

china also shows this trend. according to data from the ministry of education, the proportion of female students in general undergraduate and junior college students in 2018 was 52.5%. the proportion of female graduate students on campus increased from 24.8% in 1992 to 48.4% in 2017. in 2018, the proportion of female candidates among graduate students nationwide reached 62%, which is equivalent to 1.6 times that of male candidates.

in 2017, the proportion of china's female working-age population receiving higher education reached 48.02%, 4.65 percentage points higher than that of men (based on the assumption that the gender ratio of the working-age population is equal). compared with 1980, this probability has increased 46.2 times, while for men it has only increased 12.8 times during the same period.

· female students in undergraduate and junior college from 2010 to 2018number of people and proportion / source: "china women's development outline statistical monitoring report"

the higher the education level, the wider the geographical migration range that can be achieved, and most of them move from economically backward areas to developed areas. women who have received good education and have ambition and strength will tend to stay on the stage provided by big cities and pursue their career development.

the effect of mate selection gradient

another thing that attracts women to big cities is the special power of the marriage market.

columbia university economist lena edlund makes a provocative point. she believes women move to cities in search of wealthy partners. her research found that low sex ratios are associated with higher male incomes, meaning that where there are more high-income men, there are also more women.

cities not only provide better employment opportunities for women, but also provide a better marriage market. cities offer better-paying jobs for both men and women, and women have a greater chance of meeting quality men here.

if the marriage market is symmetrical, with young women congregating in urban areas, men will also be attracted to better marriage market opportunities in urban areas, which should be gender balanced. however, the marriage market is asymmetric.

the matching model of marriage shows a mate selection gradient of "men are higher than women," that is, men tend to choose women whose status is equal to or lower than their own, while women often require their spouse's social class and economic income to be equal to or higher than their own. it is also commonly known as "men marrying down" and "women marrying up".

high-quality men are attractive to both low-skilled and high-skilled women. in addition, job opportunities in urban areas can support more women. the combination of the labor market and the marriage market has jointly led to the enrichment of urban women.

at the same time, low-skilled men avoid the competitive urban dating market because urban women tend to demand higher incomes. but even in low-income areas with a surplus of men, the rate of unmarried women is still high. this shows that the limiting factor in women's marriage rate is not the number of men but their income.

still take hong kong, where there are more girls than boys and a seriously imbalanced gender ratio, as an example. fifty years ago, hong kong had a relatively balanced gender ratio, but in the past decade, female immigrants from the philippines and indonesia have been arriving in hong kong in search of work as domestic workers. there are now 300,000 registered women in hong kong.

but even if immigrant women are removed from the data, the sex ratio is still significantly skewed toward women. because the number of cross-border marriages between hong kong men and mainland women is also increasing, and a large number of women have entered hong kong. in 2012, this number accounted for more than 30% of all registered marriages in hong kong.

there are so many single women in hong kong, why do men still go to the mainland to find a partner? dr. suzanne choi, a researcher at the chinese university of hong kong, explains:

hong kong women are of high quality and independent, but the marriage norm of men marrying down and women marrying up has basically not changed. therefore, some men may not be able to find a local wife due to their relatively disadvantaged socioeconomic conditions. at the same time, some men may also want to find a wife with lower qualifications and earning capacity so that they can conform to society's expectations. increased regional economic integration has resulted in a large number of hong kong men working in southern china, so they actually have more opportunities than ever to meet mainland women.

inter-provincial marriage migration in mainland china is also consistent with this phenomenon. according to the sixth national population census, the gender ratios of inter-township and inter-provincial marriage migration within the province are 22.03 and 16.75 respectively. that is, when 100 women migrate within the province, there are only 22 men and 17 men. migration can be achieved through marriage. women dominate.

moreover, the characteristics of female marriage migration are mainly reflected in the flow of agricultural registered permanent residence to cities and marriage with men with urban registered permanent residence (marrying up), while the characteristics of men are mainly reflected in the flow of urban registered permanent residence to rural areas and combining with women with agricultural registered permanent residence (marrying down). the proportion of women with agricultural registered permanent residence who moved to cities and whose spouses had urban registered permanent residence (19.23%) was much higher than that of men with agricultural registered permanent residence who moved to cities (8.15%).

in the past thirty years, the biggest change in chinese women’s marriage migration is the accelerated concentration of women in economically developed areas. this is completely consistent with china’s economic development trajectory and urbanization process during the same period.

in 2010, the sixth census showed that the places where chinese women migrated for inter-provincial marriages have formed three major metropolitan areas, centered on beijing, shanghai and guangdong, accounting for nearly 60% of the country's total inter-provincial marriage migration of women.

the net out-migration of chinese women across provinces is still mainly concentrated in the relatively backward western regions such as yunnan, guizhou, sichuan, shaanxi, gansu and ningxia and the northeastern regions such as jilin and heilongjiang. however, there are also some new changes.

for example, in the three provinces of hunan, hubei and henan in central china, the net out-migration population of women for inter-provincial marriages has been expanding in the past 10 years. in the long term, the marriage squeeze will gradually spread from the west to the central region.

· source:hu ying, li shuzhuo. research on the changes in inter-provincial marriage migration patterns of contemporary chinese women [j]. women's studies series, 2015, 000(001):20-27.

while women in china's big cities are gradually following in the footsteps of hong kong women and undergoing stringent measures, from love coaches to liposuction and plastic surgery, in order to find suitable partners in the big cities, the "leftover men" in rural areas in the central and western regions are facing an increasing number of challenges. the cost of getting a wife is high and they face serious social problems.

however, from the perspective of the united states and europe, the gender ratio in large cities may flip back to a balanced state after being imbalanced for many years.

in 1990, the male to female ratio in new york was 88.5:100. by 2015, the ratio became 91:100, and today it is 94:100. in 2000, the male to female ratio in london was 95.5:100. by 2015, the male to female ratio was 95.5:100. almost flat.

· source:The shortage of single, urban men is finally coming to an end，Allison Schrager

the disappearance of the social norms of "men marrying lower down" and "females marrying up" is probably the most important reason for this reversal. similar marriages are becoming more common, which means that rich and powerful men may now want to marry a woman with a similar background.

these changes will make the ratio of men to women in the city more balanced and more in line with contemporary public opinion's expectations for "big heroines." however, every story has another side: cross-class marriages are replaced by internal marriages among the elite, and ordinary people’s opportunities for advancement are increasingly compressed. this not only makes the wealth gap between families even wider, but also makes their the next generation becomes even more alienated.