大学生择偶过程中的竞争与配对――教育同质婚的形成机制探析
Competition or Matching? ―An empirical study on the mechanism of educational homogamy in China

由个人偏好理论引出的竞争和配对两种不同的归类机制,对中国婚姻市场中教育同质婚的形成机制给出了两种不同的解释:竞争机制认为人们对经济资源的偏好导致了教育同质婚;而配对机制认为教育同质婚的形成是出于教育水平所反映的文化相似性。本文使用中国家庭追踪调查2010年和2012年的数据,采用“多层次分层模型”对上述两种机制进行了检验,实证分析了何者更适合解释当前中国婚姻市场中的教育同质婚现象。研究发现,竞争和配对这两种机制在中国婚姻市场教育同质婚的形成过程中均发生作用,但也存在性别差异,即在女性的择偶过程中,竞争机制占据主导地位;而在男性婚姻形成过程中,配对机制占据主导地位。这一结果表明,女性在寻找配偶的过程中更看重经济资源,男性则更看重文化资源。
The individual-preference theory suggests two kinds of sorting mechanisms, competition and matching, that offer different explanations for the formation of educational homogamy in China. Competition mechanism contends that people’s preference for economic resources leads to educational homogamy, whereas matching mechanism argues that the homogamy was the result of cultural similarity. Using data of CFPS2010 ＆ 2012 and the Stratification-Multilevel method, we test the validity of the two mechanisms to figure out which one could be responsible for educational homogamy in China. The results show that both competition and matching mechanism play a role in the formation of educational homogamy in China’s marriage market, and there also exists a gender difference in their relevance. Among women, the competition is prevailing mechanism in the process of mate selection, whereas among men the matching is the principal mechanism. This pattern suggests that women prefer economic resources when they are choosing a marriage partner and men prefer cultural similarity